The great river ; the story of a voyage on the Yangtze Kiang

THE

UR PROBSTHAIN
ntal Bookseller

GIFT OF
HORACE W. CARPENTIER

THE GREAT RIVER

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THE GREAT RIVER

THE STORY OF A VOYAGE
ON THE YANGTZE KIANG

BY

GRETCHEN MAE FITKIN

With an introduction by Arthur de Carle Sowerby, F.R.0.8.
Illustrated with Photographs by Donald Mennie

Shanghai :

North-China Daily News & Herald, Ltd.

Kelly & Walsh, Ltd.

1922

/ '

F

CAt^FCNTtEft

[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]

TO

0. M. Geeen and R. W. Davis

ivi^09846

INTRODUCTION

In the winter time the Yangtze is a comparatively narrow-
stream between high banks. In the summer it is miles wide, in
places overflowing until it is often impossible to see the limit of
its reaching. It is the strangest, most inexplicable river in the
world. A river captain who discovers a sand-bar on the up-trip
and decides that it is Sunday Island shifting about a bit, returns
to find it on the opposite side of the river and all his calculations
gone for nought. The same captain anchors his boat in the stream
bow- wards against a four-knot current and finds his anchor chains
slack because a back-wash holds her static. Thousands of xallages
are inundated and washed away during flood-time and yet the
richness of the Valley makes all losses worth while and the inhabit-
ants come pouring back again as rapidly as the river drops.

The height of the river's mystery is found in the Gorges. One
of the greatest naval engineers in the world sat in a junk and watched
the current coming down at four knots and the backwash along
the bank flowing upwards at the rate of two knots per hour. He
shook his head and, " There's nae such river," he said. Other
captains after taking ships through the Gorges a few times and
watching huge Szechuan junks turning round and round helplessly
in the giant whirlpools and again and again seeing their own ships
barely miss the rocks of destruction, have decided to seek less
strenuous channels of navigation !

There is impressiveness and romance about this wonderful
river. The source of it lies in areas marked " uncharted " on the
map. A new theory of a late explorer has it that the source is far
distant from the spot where it was originally supposed to be and
that, perhaps, the Yangtze might finally be found to be the longest
river in the world. The great Chengtu plain in Szechuan holds
unfathomable and practically untouched wealth. The wealth of
priceless articles of trade is there — Oriental silks and tapestries ;

il INTEODUCTION

minerals of every kind, unexploii:ed ; harvest of crops that grow
abundantly in the fertile soil ; the gifts of animals in hides and furs
and bristles, and the rare and costly musk of the musk deer.

The traveller from Shanghai to Chungking who takes time to
go southward through Poyang and Tungting Lakes gathers a series
of unforgettable pictures of the ports along the river where foreign
enterprise is yet new and in its pioneer days — Shanghai, at the
gateway ; the forts of Kiangyin ; Chinkiang, where the Yangtze is
crossed by the Grand Canal ; Nanking, where ten years ago the
Repubhcan guns on Purple Mountain were firing on the last strong-
hold loyal to the old regime ; Wuhu, whose new settlement indicates
continuing development ; Anking, which still surrounds itself with
old China's barriers of reserve, and permits no foreign tradesman
to enter ; Kiukiang, older and disappointed ; Nanchang, below
Poyang Lake, which is truly old China in all her superstitions and
all her laborious hand methods of manufacture.

The Wu-Han cities form the next picture and it is one of
busthng action. Wuchang, for many years the nest of poHtical
intrigue and the nest of it now ; Hankow, so beautiful and restful
to the foreigner until the hot days of summer come when the mosqui-
toes themselves die from the heat ; Hanyang, a miniature Pittsburgh
with its smoking stacks and busy river-harbour and noise and dirt.
This big, triple mart of trade seems to handle every article of trade
and thus to form a hub of China — paper mills and cotton
mills, the remains of past enterprise in tea, and newer enterprise in
all manner of things.

Then the traveller goes aboard another steamer, not so big
but twice as friendly, deeper into the country. Around the bend
at Yochow where, in the old days, the best bamboo used to grow,
but which is now poverty-stricken from frequent raids of lawless
bandits and thinks no more of ancient glory. Across huge Tung-
ting Lake and by " the remarkable tree " which grows up out of
the surrounding water in defiance of Nature. Then Changsha,
which is a vast surprise in its beauty, its distinct character stiU

INTRODUCTION iii

preserved by the haughty Hunanese, its history of scholars and
stalwart braves.

The farther west one goes, the more the pull is westward.
After passing the northern bend of the Yangtze, Shasi and its
dykes, appearing submerged and wild, proclaims itself the very
borderland. But then Ichang appears with its turmoiled harbour
and busy shipping at the foot of the Gorges esteeming itself the
borderland. Into the Gorges with the winds of the west in the
traveller's face he feels that here at last is the true gateway ; but
on reaching Chungking, beyond that perilous passage, he finds
that there is still more danger and romance and strangeness if
he will go on across cloudy Szechuan to the borders of Tibet. And
perhaps, then, your traveller will turn back in despair because he
knows that beyond that border are narrow, impassable canyons
and gorges where the waters of the Yangtze flow down from the
incomparably high and great glaciers of the Tibetan ranges.

Many foreigners have lived along the Yangtze River for years.
The oldest residents have the least to say about it and what they say
is said with the greatest respect. They also have, in most cases,
grave doubts of the capability of the newcomer to impart truths
about it to the pubhc. However, they do admit that there is
something to be said on behalf of the fre.sh viewpoint and often add,
lightly, that the longer a man remains in a port along the river,
the greater imbecile he becomes. But it is with the greatest hum-
bleness that I presume to inform the pubhc of the greatness and
wonder of China's biggest river and of the character of the cities
along her banks, after one trip to Chungking and back. The
only reason for which I can possibly presume to do so is because
those fuie people who live by the Great River have on every occasion
and in all instances been most generous and hospitable, and wonder-
fully helpful.

FOREWORD

It is thoroughly in keeping with the spirit of the times that a
young lady should come to China in a mood of adventure, and,
having arrived in this country, should proceed to explore anew one
of the greatest and oldest rivers of the world, subsequently present-
ing an appreciative public with a series of vivid pen pictures of the
things she saw and the impressions she received while visiting the
great towns and cities that lie along its bank.

It is the age of woman. Woman is coming into her own at a
rate that alarms all but those who can read the signs of the times.
She is storming every fortress and citadel that man in his arrogance
has considered his own, and few indeed are the strongholds that she
is not taking by force. The day has ended when a woman to accom-
plish anything in the world outside the normal sphere of her activities
must be stamped with masculinity. But the last kingdom of man,
probably the one which will be hardest for woman to capture and
make her own, is the field of exploration, for here brawn and muscle
and a power of physical endurance beyond that of the average
woman is needed. Even so, there is evidence that some day woman
will rise — or shall we say descend, since brute force and not spirit
alone is the master key to this form of human activity — even to the
level of the world's greatest explorers. Only a short while ago a
beautiful young Englishwoman crossed the Sahara to the sacred
headquarters of a tribe of fanatics, only once visited before by a
white man, and came back with a wonderful story of adventure and
maps of new routes across the desert. Then there is the story of
another Englishwoman who entered Mongolia at a time when the
Chinese Government refused to issue passports owing to the disturb-
ed condition of the countrj', and wandered from place to place,
living the fife of a nomad, thoroughly happy and contented, as
though to the manner born. But such women, it must be admitted,
are rather the exception, even in these days.

ii FOREWORD

It is not surprising, then, that Miss Gretchen Mae Fitkin
should have come to China, alone, unafraid, not knowing a soul in
the East ; established herself upon the staff of the leading news-
paper in the country ; and — gone exploring ! Nor is it surprising
that, having done so, she should tell the world in her own way what
she saw, what she thought, and what was told to her, as she jour-
neyed up the Great River. Her journey was made during the late
summer of 1921, and that fact alone commands our respect, for
conditions were such all that year, and especially during the summer,
as to render travelling upon the Yangtze Kiang neither safe nor com-
fortable. Merchantmen and men-of-war belonging to foreign Powers
were constantly being fired upon by the lawless soldiery engaged
in the campaign of North against West, and at times things were
so bad that all shipping was held up for weeks. But these facts
did not daunt our young American friend, and so we have a fresh
account of the one of the greatest wonders of this land of wonders.

And high time it is that we had another good book upon the
Yangtze, for nothing of note, except Captain Plant's little book on
the Gorges, has appeared during the last twenty years. This may
not seem of much moment in connexion with anything to do with
the so-called unchanging East, but, as a matter of fact, things arc
changing very rapidly in China, especially where East and West
meet in the Treaty Ports, The reader will be struck by this when
comparing Miss Fitkin 's writings with those of, say, Mrs. Bishop,
whose book, " The Yangtze Valley and Beyond," was published
in 1899. Captain Blakiston's " Five Months on the Yangtze,"
a much earher work, published in 1862, of course emphasizes this
still more, and even Mr. Geill's " A Yankee on the Yangtze," a
comparatively recent production, tells the same story. Other
works upon our subject are the late Dr. G. E. Morrison's "An
Australfan in China," 1895, and the much earlier book of A. J.
Little, " Through the Yangtze Gorges," 1888. To these books
and others dealing with the Yangtze the present volume comes
as a supplement, bringing our knowledge up to date, and refreshing

FOREWORD iii

our memories of what we have read of that wonderful river, which
may be described as the life-artery of China.

Rising in the highlands of North-central Tibet, on the southern
side of the great Kuen Lung Divide, where a system of bleak and
snow-clad mountains gives birth also to the Yellow River, the
Mekong, the Salween, and the Irrawaddy, the Yangtze Kiang,
literallj'' " The Son of the Ocean," flows eastward through the arid
region of Eastern Tibet, gradually bending southward till, on the
borders of Western Szechuan, it runs parallel with the Mekong and
Salween, the three rivers cutting through the eastern extension of
the great Himalayan massif, their valleys forming deep, narrow
gorges, with high and steep dividing ridges. Captain F. Kingdon
Ward has been devoting considerable time to the exploration,
botanically and geograjDhically, of this interesting section of country,
and his results and deductions, which he draws from the distribution
of the plant life here, are very significant. They may be found in
his book " In Farthest Burma," and in papers in the Journal of the
Royal Geographical Society. The deep channels that these rivers
have hewn for themselves out of the Uving rock show that thej' are
of considerable age. Speculation is rife as regards the age and
origin of some of the great mountain systems through which they
cut, but at least we may assume that the Yangtze antedates them,
for it is evident that as the uplift of the strata in these parts took
place, her waters cut through them, forming the deep ravines that
now mark her course.

Still running parallel with the Mekong, in an almost southerly
direction, the Great River, or Ta Kiang, the name usually applied
to it by the Chinese, enters the province of Yunnan, whence, taking
a zigzag course, it works eastward and then northward, forming for
a hundred miles or so the boundary bet^veen Yunnan and Sze-
chuan. Entering, at last, the latter it receives the waters of a
number of large tributaries that drain that province. Here, with
the help of the mountains through which it passes, it creates the
most magnificent scenery, scenery that even surpasses that of the

IV

FOREWORD

famous Tchang Gorges, while it is navigable for native boats from
at least 300 miles above Chungking to that city, Chungking
marks the limit of navigability for large steamers, and so is one of
the most important cities along the entire length of the Great
River. From this point, the latter takes a general easterly direction,
meandering through the provinces of Hupei, Kiangsi, Anhui and
Kiangsu, till it pours its mighty volume of gathered waters at the
rate of 770,000 cubic feet per second into the Yellow Sea, 3,000
miles from its source. It has descended from an altitude of from
fifteen to twenty thousand feet, and, with its tributaries, has drained
an area of 650,000 square miles. Little wonder, then, that its
annual rise is from 70 to 90 feet, while it deposits 6,428,000,000
cubic feet of sediment every year upon the floor of the Yellow Sea.
Like the Yellow River, it rises annually, overflowing its banks,
flooding vast stretches of country, and depositing richness in the
form of silt over the land, but unlike its northern sister, it is China's
joy rather than her sorrow. Its valley is fertile in the extreme, the
good soil producing magnificent crops, and one may well call this
wide basin the garden of China.

Many and prosperous are the cities along its banks, while it
carries an enormous amount of traffic upon its heaving bosom. Its
mighty volume of water forms one of the main trade arteries of the
country, and by its means the vast resources of the West are tapped.
Politically the Yangtze is of great importance, and there arc
many, knowing China, who see in it the natural boundary between
the North and the South, and who believe that a division of the
country along this line would be the solution to the troubles which
now wrack this unhappy land. Another solution suggests itself,
however, and that is that the country should be divided up into
three states, North, Middle and South, the Yangtze Basin forming
the Middle State. This would conform more to the natural trend
of things, for there is little doubt that the people, fauna and flora
of the Yangtze Valley are separable, on the one hand, from those of
North Chijia, where the Tartar element and Tartarian afianities

FOEEWORD V

dominate, and, on the other, from those of South China, where a
Malay infusion marks the human inhabitants, and the fauna and
flora are Oriental in character.

The economic importance of the Yangtze Valley and the
country beyond which this river taps is, of course, beyond compute,
nor is it to be wondered at that the European nations, whose people
have come to China to trade, have been desirous of exploiting this
great field of commercial possibilities. The daj^ is not far distant,
always providing that peace in China intervenes, when railways
will be built along the entire course of the Great River, and up the
valleys of the tributaries, so as to tap the vast territories that have
as yet been almost untouched, and when that day comes we shall
see the cities described in these pages become ten times more
prosperous, as the wealth of the hinterlands pours into them to be
tran.shippcd for exportation, and the produce of the outer world
is deposited upon their wharves for distribution up country.

But things must be made safe for the trader, and one would
like here to put forward a plea to the Chinese people, to their re-
publican government, and their military governors, to combine to
stamp out the curses of militarism and brigandage that go stalking,
hand in hand, through the land, rendering commerce impossible,
and life and property so insecure as to be hardly worth the holding,
Pohticians in Peking and Canton may find the game they are playing
highly amusing and profitable, but they are making havoc of their
country, wiecking its resources, and ruining its trade.

And with that we may close our remarks here, leaving the
Authoress to tell her story of the Great River, the river that was
ere ever the foot of primeval man trod the soil of this most ancient
of lands, and will be when man and all his works are " one with
yesterday's s'en thousand 5'ear9."'

Arthur de Cable Sowerby

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction and Foreword

I Up from the Sea

II The Mouth of the River and Nantungchow

III On the Grand Canal ...

IV Nanking and the Port Across the Way

V WuHU, THE Rice Centre of the Yangtze ...

VI An Interlude in a Launch
\T!I Anking and Its Traditions

VIII Kiukiang, a Tale of Glory Departed

IX Nanchang, the Unassailable

X Hankow, the Wonder-City of China

XI Hany.ang, the Hinge of the Three Cities ...

XII Wuchang, the Sure Foundation of a Dream

XIII Wuch.ang After the Storm

XIV YocHow, the Storm-Beaten Gateway to Hunan ...

XV Changsha

XVI Shasi — And Never a Law of God Nor Man Runs North

of '53 '

XVII Ichang — The Gateway to the West ...

XVIII Ichang Ruins

XIX Through the Gorges

XX Kueichowfu and Wanhsien

XXI West China Boxers in 1921

XXII Opium in the West

XXIII The City of Seven Gates — Chungking

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Gorges in Sombre Mood

The Great River Near the Sea

The Eroding Hand of the Centuries

Avenue to Ming Tombs of Nanking

Nanking City Wall

The Shady Side of the Yangtze

The Upper Entrance to the Wind-box Gorge

A Halt on the Riverside Track

A Gate of the Gorges ...

On the Han River

The Bund at Hankow

Hanyang Iron Works

Hanyang's Forest of Masts

An Upper Yangtze Steamer

Submerged by the Ich.4iNG Floods

Opium Burning at Ichang

The Prison Walls of the Yangtze ...

Safe Breaking — A Fifty-foot Drop to Break the

Salvage Work After the Looting of Ichang

The Late Captain S. Cornell Plant ...

The City of Kueichowfu

Bridge at Wanhsien

The Doudart de Lagree Piles Herself Up

Approaching Perilous Waters

A Robbers' Fortress Overlooking the Gorges
Temple of " The Cool Breeze at the Side of the P
Looking Down on One of the Rapids
Tall Rocks like Citadels

. Frontispiece

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THE GREAT RIVER

CHAPTER I

Up from the Sea

Long before the traveller sees China on the
horizon as he nears the port of entrance to Shanghai,
he sees her in solution in the yellow waters of the
Great River where they merge with the Sea. So
laden with the soil of China is the Yangtze that one
wonders from what limitless source the land is replen-
ished or into what bottomless pit the spoil of the river
is being poured. Predictions regarding the future
coast line and shape of the River's mouth are just as
uncertain, for the Yangtze shifts and twists and forms
new channels and deposits its alluvial burden hardly
twice in the same place. Those who have believed
that China is growing eastward have not hesitated to
build on that belief and to place their fortunes in the
farthermost points. Indeed the Saddle Islands, which
the incoming traveller will encounter, were once the
object of an attempt to develop a summer resort for
Shanghai, an attempt which might, it may be con-
ceived, have succeeded, had not a typhoon upset all
calculations. It was in regard to a small village on
these islands that the original statement was made
that " the chief industry of China is the manufacture
of smells." But leaving the Yangtze for a time, it is
necessary for the traveller to take the turning to the
left and sail up the Huangpu toward Shanghai, that

2 THE GREAT RIVER

great commercial port of China, the spokesman for
traders with the interior.

He is not coming to a place of which he has
heard little if at all. For though Shanghai stands as
the result of less than 80 years of foreign endeavour,
she has so impressed her personality upon the world
that there is little left to be said about her except what
has gone into the development of her character and
by virtue of which she is significant.

How many centuries Shanghai existed perhaps as
a seaport but certainly as a place of trade when China's
door was closed to the outside world is unknown.
French missionaries penetrated early and from them
and certain Chinese accounts later translated a few
facts are gleaned concerning the humble and simple
life of the inhabitants before 1300 ; of the piratical
coastal forays of the Japanese ; of walls built againse
ingression ; of the lighter, vainer life that came with
increasing prosperity ; until gradually envy was deve-
loped in the minds of adventurers throughout the world.
Then came the days of the tea clippers, of clandestint
opium trade when daring and resourceful men of all
nations rivalled one another in the romantic trade of
Cathay.

The beginning of what has become legitimate
entrance into China was in 1842. At that time, on
account of China's attitude toward British trade.
Sir William Parker brought a fleet to Woosung carrjing
Sir Henry Gough's force of 4,000 men. The course of his
expedition and its accomplishments are matters to
be gleaned from historical works. For the authoress's
purpose it is sufficient to note that the day the treaty

UP FROM THE SEA 3

between Great Britain and China was signed on board
H.M.S. Conuvallis at Chinkiang and the subsequent
opening of the ports of Shanghai, Ningpo, Foochow,
Amoy and Swatow to commerce, was the beginning of
the Shanghai of to-day.

The growth of this great port, which in the eyes
of the world means China, has been meteoric. She is
now known in every corner of the globe. She stands as
a symbol of romance. She is still called by those who
have listened greedily from afar to the tales of the
opium and tea chpper trade, a " sink of iniquity."
She is the doorkeeper of tradition and destiny. But
truly she is merely the representation of the achieve-
ment of average and human men whose greatness was
not individual greatness but the greatness of an ideal.
This City Republic, progressive, efficient, well sup-
plied with hospitals, roads and schools, has been made
by people who thought that they were merely doing
their day's work and who were able to blend their
nationaHstic aspirations to a common viewpoint.

Shanghai has been, since its very beginning, a
place of refuge in times of trouble. During the
Taiping rebellion, refugees caused the population of
the Chinese of the City to swell from 20,000 to 500,000
and it is recorded that in August, 1862, there were
10,000 refugees living in the old race course. She
has later been the safety of political refugees and the
haven in the days of the Empire of those who beheved
in constitutional government. It seems to have been
the pressing need of meeting new and strange contin-
gencies such as these which has given rise to the extra-
ordinarily efficient yet simple Government of to-day.

4 THE GREAT RIVER

And indeed, the constitutionalists of China, who
have the husk rather than the kernel of the idea of a
Republic, could do no better than to look on Shanghai
as a model, for here all the advantages of a Rej^ublic of
Nations have arisen through mutual dependability, and
a Government devoid of red tape has been produced by
men who have had the advantage of familiarity at first
hand with the troubles they were remedying. A few
phases of Municipal Government show particularly
well the progress made in these 80 short years. The
Municipal Electricity Department, for instance, is one
of the biggest and most successful in the world. The
Health Dei^artment has so improved the sanitary
condition of the city that the best medical authorities
are now able to say without challenge that, considering
the risks in all parts of the world, the mortality ratio is
no higher in Shanghai than elsewhere. Dangers at
home have become commonplace through famiharity,
but they are no less real. A foreigner who neglects
the necessary precautions may die of small-pox in
Shanghai, but he is quite as apt to hear that his bro-
ther at home has been killed in an accident on the
elevated railway. That much maligned department,
the Public Works, has had an almost impossible task
in producing from a Chinese city of narrow streets and
tumbled, crowded buildings, something that would
keep pace with the increasingly numerous motoring
public, and that constant increase is one of the in-
dications of their success.

In short, while 30 years ago saw Shanghai a city
without tramways, railway facilities, or manufactories,
it to-day possesses practically all the complements of

UP FROM THE SEA 5

any city at home and is now agitating, not for the
conveniences of metropoUtan Hfe, but for the cultural
assets of libraries, art galleries and museums.

Many social organizations are in existence, chief
among them the American Woman's Club and, more
lately established, the British Women's Association,
whose activities are becoming more and more far-
reaching and influential. The Race Club, the oldest
sporting Club in Shanghai, gives a half -million dollars
every year to charities and conducts its racing on as
high a plane as any Club in the world.

The Huangpu Conservancy Board, who have
worked for j^ears on harbour problems, last year
conducted a Commission headed by Major-General
William M. Black, the outcome of which was the
putting into effect of practical plans toward making
Shanghai one of the few great ports of the world.
And this in spite of the fact that in 1875 Sir Robert
(then Mr.) Hart, the Inspector-General of Customs,
penned a memorandum saying that "in 20 years,
Chinkiang will have taken the place of Shanghai as a
semi-terminus and transhipment port " and that
" in 10 or 20 years the competition of Chinese steamers
will have swept the foreign flags from the coasting
trade, and displayed the Chinese colours in London
and Liverpool docks."

Nor has Shanghai developed as a commercial
centre only. It is fast becoming the literary centre of
China as well, for it is in Shanghai that the development
of modern Chinese in journalism and essay writing has
taken place. And thus it is that in this city the cur-
rents which afifect the written language are started.

6 THE GREAT RIVER

Not only this, but Shanghai is also the radiating centre
of public opinion toward which all eyes are turned.
It captures the imagination by its possibilities of the
future while Peking holds the romance of the past.

Industrially, its growth has been phenomenal.
Cotton mills, silk filatures, egg-drying concerns, to-
bacco and cement .factories have gone up almost
over-night. The trade of the city and its important
commercial position has made it a financial centre.
In 1915 there was more silver in the vaults of the
Shanghai banks than in any other city of the world.

And how is this remarkable city repubUc govern-
ed ? By a Council of nine men, representative of the
various nationals of the city according to a fixed ratio
of population, not one of whom receives a penny of
salary for his services and who once a year render to
their fellow-citizens an account of what they haA'^e
accomplished as one year's Council gives place to the
next. Shanghai may well be proud of possessing high
standards of honesty and efficiency in Government.

It is necessary for it to be so, for Shanghai's success
is taken to mean the success of foreign endeavour in
the whole Yangtze Valley. Her difficulties are not
remote ; they are at hand and demanding to be handled
as each transhipment of cargo occurs.

Elaborate machinery must always grow up at a
terminus. Shanghai has taken her place at the
gateway handling outward and inward troubles, always
dependent and relying upon the ports of the Great
River which communicate with China's proHfic interior.
But in doing so she has developed an individual soul.

CHAPTER II
The Mouth of the River and Nantungchow

No one could ask for greater comfort in travelling
than is afforded on the foreign steamers which ply
between Hankow and Shanghai. They are large and
commodious, well-fitted, and maintain an excellent ser-
vice. On the decks of these steamers the passenger
may sit in ease and, if he chance to leave Shanghai
by day, watch the teeming traffic of the Huangpu.
Junks pass one another slowly and serenely in barbaric
displa}^ their wide, brown sails asleep in the wind.
Swiftly-moving tugs hurry along with little reverence
for the traditions of the past. Big ocean-going freigh-
ters discharging their cargo at docks or on lighters in
mid-stream add to the junk-shop appearance of the
river. In the midst of it all are myriad other craft,
little tossing red sampans, foreign sail-boats being
cleaned and washed under the direction of their
laodahs, four-masted sailing vessels whose days of
usefulness when they transported red woods from
Oregon to China seem to have gone by forever.

Around the Woosung Forts and past the lighthouse,
then on by Tsung Ming Island, with its million in-
habitants, an island which has been formed by the
currents of the river as they divided and cast up silt,
the steamer moves. The river is extremely wide at
this point, so wide indeed that it is difficult to see the
opposite shore as the steamer moves on its accustomed
course.

8 THE GREAT RIVER

The first indication that Nantungchow is near at
hand is the sight of the pagoda on Langshan Hills,
cloud-covered and picturesque. Five miles farther on,
the enterprising traveller clambers down into a scow
which has been pushed forth into the stream in time to
intercept and become lashed to the still-moving
steamer. Once aboard with his baggage, he is almost
jerked from his feet as the rope is suddenly loosened
and the scow goes swirling backward ; but it is quickly
controlled by the sturdy oarsmen and headed toward
shore.

Landing on a rock-built jetty, the visitor to Nan-
tungchow is taken by motor-bus to the city over a new
highway built up like a dyke to protect the land from
the overflow of the Yangtze. Once in the city, he is
whisked about around the lakes and over the graceful,
12-arch bridge which spans them ; is taken to inspect
the various schools of many kinds and the institutions
for the aged infirm, the blind, and the orphans; is
put up at a new and clean Chinese hotel ; and is finally
taken to call upon the man whose genius is responsible
for it all.

Throughout China there is no other city built as
Nantungchow has been, under the personal direction
of one man. At every turn is to be seen the embodi-
ment of the ideas of His Excellency Chang Chien.
Everything is typical of modern thought and develop-
ment. Yet, as he stands before you, he seems a perfect
representation of the old China of unchanging customs
and tradition. Stooped with his 70 years, his liands
folded within his long sleeves, he bears himself with
that calm dignity which is the birthright of the Chinese

j^ _ ai ^1 L W ^M ' ' '

The Great River Near the Sea

The Erodine Hand of the Centuries

I'd l-'tire Payc S

NANTUNGCHOW 9

people. One feels the constraint of many minute
conventions ; great care must be taken not to sit in
the wrong chair, nor to drink tea at other than the
appointed time, nor to neglect the polite questions of a
guest. All this occupies one's mind so that, when His
Excellency finally reaches the point of speaking seriously
about his real plans and projects, it startles one into the
realization that this man's thoughts are not in the past.

Nor is he such a paradox after all. Modernity in
regard to industrial and economic conditions is his
hobby and the scope of it is very wide, it must be
admitted. At heart, however, this old scholar is
bound up with the traditions of his people. On the
Langshan, the hills to the eastward of the city, he has
caused 'to be built a temple to the Goddess of Mercy
and has filled it with images of the Goddess gathered
from all parts of the Republic and this has become so
famous that pilgrims make their way to the spot year
after year from long distances. Neither has he altered
the customs which touch his personal Ufe and habits.
His home has remained inviolate from modern touch
if not from modern thought. It is significant, too,
that his pet scheme is the building of a road which will
connect this "Model City" with Yangchow, his birth-
place, and home of his fathers on the Grand Canal.

A road in that direction has already been started
which now connects the industrial centre. Tang Ka Zia,
with Nantungchow. One must visit Tang Ka Zia
to begin to understand the amount of progressive work
which has been accomplished. The road thereto
leads along a creek up and down which may be seen
slow-moving river-craft laden with cotton and grain,

10 THE GREAT RIVER

very fresh and green in the spring-time. Their motive
power may be discerned as the heads of the trackers
are seen appearing and disappearing above the grain
fields within which the tow path is hidden.

After a ride of perhaps half-an-hour the factory
district is reached and the traveller is immediately
impressed with the excellence of the idea of removing
the noise and smoke of the factories from the vicinity
of the city settlement. The largest spinning and
weaving mill there, the Dah Sun, is also said to be the
oldest of its kind in China. It is equipped with 60,000
spindles and 400 looms and provides work for 1,000
people including men, women and children whose
wages run from 10 to 40 cents a day. The wage is an
average one throughout China but the bonuses paid in
the mills and factories of Tang Ka Zia make them
actually much higher, while the living conditions of the
workers themselves have been improved greatly.

The whole process of turning cotton into cloth
may be observed in the Dah Sun mill, from the first
coarse spinning of the soft, white substance to the
bolted cloth as it is being measured into lengths
to be sent forth for bleaching or dyeing. There are
also huge reels of cotton thread, the strand being
exceptionally strong and firm to be made from cotton
of such short staple as is grown in the Nantungchow
district. Near the Dah Sun mill is a cotton oil mill
which turns out 100 piculs of oil per daj^ A foreign
chemist is in charo;e of the laboratorv and. with his
three Chinese assistants, is busy at the work of refining
and manufacturing new compounds. He had prepared
from the oil a rich yellow compound which, he said,

NANTUNGCHOW 11

would shortly be the rival of various popular shorten-
ings and for the manufacture of which IVIr, Chang
Chien had promised to build a factory.

A last look at Nantungchow and the surrounding
district should be taken from the Langshan, which
lie to the eastward of Nantungchow about as far as
Tang Ka Zia lies to the westward. Farther than one
can see from the summit of one of these, the influence
of this one man, who seems to be wholly absorbed in
the interests of his people, is supreme. Near at hand,
in the cup of the valleys, tiny fir trees are set thickly —
the work of afforestation. A little bej^ond are fields
of ripening wheat which have been sown and cared for
by students of the College of Agriculture. Well-built
highways wind about the bases of the hills, through
the fields and back toward the city. Upon the eastern
side of the hills are erected the summer homes of His
Excellency. On the western side, set high upon a
rocky slope, are the shrines of pilgrims — pilgrims who
may be seen, even as one watches, patiently ap-
proaching, their fans fluttering as they walk. And to
the southward, the Yangtze winds its brown sinuous
length through the green of the countryside.

Strangely, it is the river itself which, having
brought into being the ports along its banks, now
threatens their existence. Nantungchow lies below
the Yangtze's high-water level. It has become evident
during the last ten years that concerted action would
have to be taken by river frontage owners on both the
north and the south banks to prevent valuable farming
lands from being washed away. In 1914, a Nantung-
chow Shore Protection Board was organized and work

12 THE GREAT RIVER

begun. This work consisted of revetment made by-
means of " spur " dykes, layers of stone placed upon
brush mattresses along the river front. ^Ir. H. C. de
Rijke, who was well-known at that time in China, was
engaged as engineer upon the work until his death in
1918. Mr. Chen Pao-chu is at present vice-director of
the Shore Defence Board, under H.E. Chang Chien, and
an American engineer, Mr. E. W. Lane, fills the
vacancy caused by the death of Mr. de Rijke.

Because the deep water channel of the river has
constantly and gradually changed its course, large
areas of land have been lost on the one side and thrown
up on the other in muddy flats which are not cultivated.
Aside from being a great financial loss, this fact creates
a dangerous condition of affairs, for instance, in the
now practically unused channel behind Pitman King
Island where a large bore rushes at flood tide and
sweeps over the land.

The plans proposed, which have been presented by
a consulting engineer of Shanghai, are designed to
stabilize the channel of the river without diverting
it unnaturally and should make it possible for the land
upon both banks to be reclaimed without danger of
being reflooded later. The value of the land far
exceeds the cost of the work and the only difficulty is
presented by the lack of sufficient funds to work with.
Kiangyin, situated on the south bank of the Yangtze,
already has a scheme afoot for financing the work
upon that side.

The whole problem is, of course, linked up with
the entire -question of river conservancy and, more
particularly, with the difficulties at Chinkiang.

B

CHAPTER III
On the Grand Canal

During the winter months, Chinkiang is barren
and desolate. Mud flats extend from the abbreviated
Bund far out to the water's edge, gaunt piles thrusting
up in support of a then useless jetty. The whole
black area is dotted with masted junks sunk partly into
the mud, all sagging at different angles. The back-
ground of this scene of desolation is more pleasing with
its tree-lined Bund and cluster of foreign dwellings, while
farther in the distance, beyond the Chinese walled
city and suburbs, are rolling green foothills. Chief
among these hills is Chinshan, or Golden Island, to the
westward, which rises from a capacious temple at its
foot and is crowned by a picturesque pagoda standing
Hke a guard on the look-out.

It was between this island and the mainland —
now a quiet vaUey — where the channel of the
Yangtze used to flow that the British fleet under Vice-
Admiral Sir James Hope anchored in 1861 when
engaged in an expedition to open the Yangtze Kiang
to foreign trade. The channel has been steadily
changing since that time. Golden Island is now a part
of the mainland and at a considerable distance from the
shore. Great quantities of earth have been carried
away by erosion from the northern bank and deposited
in the form of a sand-spit before Chinkiang. It is
said that in an area of 10,000 mow over six bilHon cubic
feet of earth have been torn away during 15 years.
Some of the favourite haunts of snipe-shooters on the

14 THE GREAT RIVER

northern bank have gone under 75 feet of water in one
year's time. Engineering authorities contend that the
channel will, after a time, gradually move back to its
former position. They say that as the curve of the
river grows, the flow of water decreases in velocity and
that as it decreases the tendency is toward the de-
position of silt. As silt is deposited along the northern
bank, erosion will begin on the southern and the present
process will reverse itself. Therefore, they say, it is
conceivable that in 60 or 70 years Chinkiang may
emerge from her present high and dry state. But
this is faint consolation for the inhabitants of the city
and in particular for the shipping companies, who were
filled with hopes of a great treaty port at the junction
of the Grand Canal and the Yangtze Kiang.

From the pagoda on Golden Island, which one
reaches in a short walk from the city through the coun-
tryside, a commanding view is to be had of land and
water scenes in every direction. Down river is the
temple-crowned Elephant Hill and farther away is
Silver Island wdth temples resting at its base and
Chinese fortifications sunk into its summit. To the
north across the river stretch the low marshy lands at
the mouth of the Grand Canal and one's eyes focus to
pick out the location of the famous old city of Yangchow.
But on the Chinkiang side the railway stretches in
long parallels eastward toward Soochow and Shanghai.

Silver Island, perhaps more than any other spot
in the environs of Chinkiang, is visited by travellers.
There poets find a romantic atmosphere among the old
temples where the abbots and his monks write and
copy history to preserve and add to the culture of their

ON THE GRAND CANAL 15

country. Upon the walls the astonished archaeologist
sees Egyptian and Chinese antiquities side by side.
It is in such spots as this that one catches an insight
into the imaginative life of the Chinese, to whom the
beauty of abstract things is not a phase but an
essential of existence.

History tells of Chinkiang's share in the trials of
China. Of the days during the Taiping rebellion when
the city was laid wacte so that when the British fleet
arrived in 1861 they saw " hardly a roof among the
heap of dSris which marked the spot of a once-
populous suburb." Of the Yangtze riots of 1891,
when the movement was so definitely anti-foreign in
character that many of the community were forced to
leave the port. Of the terrible Kiangpei famine of 1907,
which brought about a huge influx of refugees, who
camped outside Chinkiang, the poisonous conditions of
their encampment being a severe menace to themselves
and to their neighbours. These calamities seemed
only to be leading up to the climax of the Revolution,
when the massacre of Manchu survivors was wholesale
and the general suffering pitiful. Ladies in charge of
mission schools who refused to leave theii- dependent
charges, boarded junks with them and remained in the
harbour under the protection of a foreign gunboat.
Indeed, the intervention of certain Anglo-Saxons who
had the wit and courage to turn aside attacks on various
occasions was the only hghtening of the burden of
Chinkiang's sorrows. So true it seems that in China,
as elsewhere, misfortune is cumulative and is reaped
not by the wrong-doers but by the helpless and the
unoffending.

16 THE GREAT RIVER

With this picture of Chinkiang, desolate behind her
rapidly-increasing mud shore and with her sorrowful
background in history, it is a relief to loiow that a few
miles up the Grand Canal one can dip so readily into the
glories of a poetic past. One may travel to the city of
Yangchow by junk and, seated upon the bow, may im-
agine one's self saiUng picturesquely along in one of the
gaily-festooned three-deck vessels in which the medi-
aeval emperors of China travelled in state across their
dominions. They were hke floating palaces, those barges
in which the Imperial party sailed by day. From
Loyang on the Yellow River to Yangchow near the
Yangtze they sailed in luxury, stopping each of the forty
nights en route at a shore palace, the most magnificent
of the 40 along this Imperial waterway being Yangchow.
Here the court were wont to disport itself with a gaiety
and extravagance rivaUing that of Rome.

A breath of the ancient atmosphere still remains
in the ruins of this " Pompeii of old China." The
remnants of that grandeur are surrounded by one of the
most beautiful walls in China to-day outside which
wanders a winding stream edged by weeping wiUow
trees.

Six centuries ago, in the days of Kublai Khan,
Marco Polo governed there. Perhaps the Chinese had
more cause then than now for anti-foreign feeling, for
not only were the Mongols an alien dynasty but, in
many cases, they trusted the ruling of their Chinese
domains to foreigners from many lands. The Polo
family were but a few of a large number of strangers
differing in language, rehgion, race and principle, but
suited to the Mongol emperors.

ON THE GRAND CANAL 17

However, it is to the glory of China that Yangchow
was less than a century under the Mongol heel and
that it is the site of the last valiant stand of Shih
Ko-fa, the Ming general, against superior Manchu
invaders, many years later.

Yangchow was not rebuilt in the grandeur of the
past, but remains a relic of a colourful page of history
uncomplicated by layers from later pages which might
have obscured that one clear picture.

CHAPTER IV
Nanking and the Port Across the Way

The gates are barred and His Majesty's soldiers
stand by to allow within now and again a messenger
to the new court which has been estabhshed, or a
member of it, perhaps, who has gone outside the wall.
A portly rider enters upon an Imperial donkey and a
crowd of small boys — hangers-on at the court — run
after in great glee. He rides through streets filled
with sad-eyed toiling people who do not Uft their
heads as he goes by. The inhabitants of the city who
have been found to be too old or too weak to work
have been killed without mercj^. Even the beggars
are gone and one is left to surmise what has become of
them. Everywhere is confusion and the atmosphere
is heavy with dread.

Finally the rider and his escort bring up before
the palace grounds. The palace shows signs of having
been hastily built and is tawdrily aglitter with red
and golden dragons carved and painted above the
doors and around the eaves. The rider alights, puffing,
and enters the court-yard. Reposing in a large open
space is the gilded boat with a huge carved dragon
on the bow in which His Celestial Majesty Hung Tsiu-
tsuen glided down the Yangtze to Nanking. The
palace has many outer reception rooms which are
utilized mainly by the servants of the court, of whom
there are many. All tasks are light in this easy-
going court hfe and the dusters and sweepers, servitors
and soldiers gather together for petty gambling or for

NANKING 19

lengthy, noisy discussion. The same shabbiness and
disorder is noted within as without. Only the shrieking
of bats is needed to complete the gloomy picture.

The portly visitor makes his way nearer the
Imperial sanctum. Here there is more activity for
His Majesty is eating his tiffin and servants go back and
forth, to and from the kitchen bearing bowls of rice and
cabbage, meat and fish. His Highness will not be seen
until after his afternoon siesta. So the visitor sits
or reclines on one of the dusty settees in the inner
reception room until four o'clock, when he obtains an
audience.

This self -proclaimed Emperor of the " Taiping
Dynasty " receives visiting officials in the Audience
Chamber, seated upon his throne. His dress is
embroidered and studded with gold. He wears a
crown of heavy gold and Ukewise a necklace of gold.
And during the hours of audience he discusses the
affairs of State, issues proclamations, receives and
answers letters. Here is a man, insincere, fanatic, who
has spread fear of himself and his followers throughout
southern China. He has captured and held Nanking
and is destined to hold it for more than ten years. He
is destroying the buildings of the old capital and has
persecuted the city's inhabitants. And he does all
this for the sake of the spread of Christianity, he says,
though, to be sure, it is Christianity very strangely
interpreted. Missionaries have written to him ex-
plaining its truths and discussing the teachings of the
Bible, but Tien-wang, as he is called, disregards them
all and in the end claims " that he has been to Heaven
himself and is, therefore, correctly informed."

20 THE GREAT RIVER

Such is the picture which historians of the Taiping
times have given us of Nanking. The energetic founder
of the Ming Dynasty who made it his capital for years
even before he despatched the final expeditionary force
that drove the last of the Mongol line out of Peking and
back to their old home in Mongolia, must have turned
and writhed in his grave.

Even now, many people think that Nanking should
be the capital of a united China. During the Revolu-
tion the original Republican plan was to make Nanking
the reform capital of regenerated China and after
conquering it from the stubborn Chang Hsun and his
pig-tailed braves who held the city while the rest of the
Empire crumbled and fell away, a new Parliament
proceeded with business there. An impressive cere-
mony was held at the Ming tombs when Dr. Sun Yat-
sen reverently informed the spirits of the great Ming
Emperors that the usurping dynasty had lost the throne
and that China once more was to be ruled by Chinese.
But in order to prevent his own sources of power from
moving afield and scattering, President Yuan Shih-
kai allowed portions of his Peking garrison to mutiny,
thus leading the Southerners to the impression that
he was not able to keep the Repubhc in power without
Peking at the head.

The ancient city is more quiet and peaceful now
than in those times, lying as it does between the separate
strifes of North and South. The Old Porcelain Tower
which once stood at Nanking and became famous all
over the world is in ruins. Visitors have picked up
the tiles one by one until nothing is left of it except
that part which remains beneath the ground. The

Avenue to Ming Tombs of Nanking

Nanking City Wall

T,, F.ir, /•„,„■ :•;

THE PORT ACROSS THE WAY 21

buildings of the erstwhile capital are a great grey heap
of ruins near the South Gate. And the old examination
halls, with their tiny cubicles and long corridors where
scholars came j'^ear after year to struggle for their
degrees, are gone, too, since the beginning of Repub-
hcan days. Only the tombs of the Ming Emperors
have remained to watch through the centuries.

Always it is found thus in China, history within
history, event piled upon event until the atmosphere
is so burdened with the age of a great civilization that
one is ever walking old ways and gazing into the faces
of men who have walked thus since their lives began.

A crenelated wall wanders for 23 miles around the
city of Nanking, up and down over hill and valley,
supporting high, picturesque ramps or falhng into
equally picturesque ruin, all grey and lavender as the
sunhght and shadows fall. To the eastward. Purple
Mountain looms large and near, protecting, under its
shadow, the Ming tombs. Compact villages cling tight-
ly to the outside of the wall as though to gather
safety from nearness. But inside are wide stretches
of country, dotted with tiny settlements like little
farms and spread — as if washed with water colours —
with fields of mustard and splashes of lotus. After one
passes through the bell-towered gate into the city
from the crowded village without, it is like going into
the country-side rather than away from it.

One jolts along over a bad road in an all but
broken-down ricsha. All the decrepit vehicles in China
seem to have gravitated to Nanking. The once
flagged roadway presents continual bumps and jolts
which would not have been possible had the original

22 THE GREAT RIVER

clay foundation remained without repair since it was
first laid out. One passes village-like settlements, the
inhabitants of which continue to thresh their grain
with the primitive flail and weave their homespun
cotton on hand looms set upon the earth floors of their
cottages ; and comes at length upon the schools and
colleges, universities and experimental stations, all
arranged in one section of Nanking. Here again is
the contrast between old and new. Ginhng College,
a school for girls which maintains the highest standards
of women's colleges in America, is housed within the
old mansion of Li Hung-chang. The students may be
seen on a summer's day studying or reading in the old,
fascinating garden where one catches glimpses of droop-
ing willow trees through crumbling moon gates. And
all about goes on the work of educating young China in
western learning side by side with the instruction of
the foreign student in Chinese language and customs*

Across the way is Pukow with little history and no
romance, a railway terminus only. The stumpy masts
and erect stack of a practical Blue Funnel liner reveal
themselves against the smoky atmosphere. Here the
railway and the Great River meet, 200 odd miles
up from the sea with deep water beside the wharves so
that ocean steamers can tranship directly, exchanging
the products of Europe for those of China.

The original plans for China's north coast railway
called for a route following the Grand Canal and cross-
ing the Yangtze at Chinkiang. But the improved
plans which substituted Nanking for Chinkiang as a
terminal on the south bank made Pukow the gateway
to the north and a strategic point economically. It

THE PORT ACROSS THE WAY 23

possesses a great advantage over Hankow, for at all
times of the year ocean steamers can reach Pukow,
while Hankow is only open to large steamers during
the few months of the high water season.

At present the railway lines stretch northwards
traversing the Grand Canal and Yellow River country
to Tsinanfu, Tientsin and Peking, but when the new
central railway is built, Pukow will have direct rail
connections with Sinyang, the great mart of southern
Honan and, also, perhaps, with Hankow and the other
great cities of Central China. Sinyang is a great salt
centre and outlet for the products of the country lying
south.

Pukow possesses great possibilities as a port
where the rich ores of Shansi and the northern provinces
may be loaded on sea-going vessels. With adequate
development of the northern mines and mining railways
in connexion with the trunk line running to Pukow, this
might be a great shipping terminus for the industrial
minerals which China possesses so abundantly.

As an example of the stimulation of foreign
enterprise Pukow is distinctive, for it was totally
unheard of twenty years ago and, though its normal
development has been retarded by the military and
political troubles so frequent during the first decade
of the Republic, still the working figures for 1919
show a final profit per kilometre of line amounting
to Mex. $2,848. For improvements and additions to
property, the sum of Mex. §996,000 was expended,
§364,000 of this being for new rolling stock.

But as an object of romantic interest the Yangtze
traveller is glad to leave it behind.

CHAPTER V
WuHU, THE Rice Centre of the Yangtze

WuHiT, the rice centre of the Yangtze valley,
flaunts her riches before the eyes of aU travellers up
the river and, more especially, to visitors at her port
who take time to cUmb to the top of one of her many
hills and look down upon field after field of paddy laid
out in squares and rectangles.

Here and there remains a patch of lightest green
still untransplanted and through all the fields women
and men are working steadily, crouching as they wade
about knee-deep in water, weeding or replanting the
rice. The fields are terraced so that each is higher
than the next and at the corners of many plots primitive
water paddles are worked either bj^ hand or by tread-
mill to carry the water up these terraces and over the
dykes that act as retaining walls. Sometimes tliree or
four men and women, with skirts tucked up short
around their waists, tread the water-carrier and
from a distance look Uke ballet dancers on a puppet-
stage. Coming closer, you see that they rest their
arms over the upper wooden support and take their
work easily, laughing and gossiping T\dth one another.

Other stages of rice-planting are not so easy, such
as guiding a clumsy plough behind a clumsier caribou
through the mud and water of a destined rice-field.
The whole scene is dotted with dry oases of straw-
thatched huts set at intervals in the watery desert
and away off to the south-east you can rest your eyes

THE RICE CENTRE OF THE YANGTZE 25

on the soft, uneven sky-line formed by range after
range of dusky blue hills.

That is the traveller's first impression of Wuhu.
He sees that it is quiet, sleepy perhaps, but pros-
perous as his boat draws up before the one-mile stretch
of Bund that is the river frontage of the Foreign Settle-
ment, and looks for the first time at the green hills,
around and over which Wuhu is built, and gazes at
the prominent, well cared-for Customs buildings with
the clock-tower on the centre one. He then lands
at a pontoon placed conveniently by an enterprising
steamship company, or perhaps farther down at Vien-
nese steps and then as he traverses the rice-fields
he hears and gradually comes to see the truth of the
statement that the history of Wuhu is bound up in
the history of rice, rice markets, flood and pestilence
that come to destroy her crops, and years of prosperity
under favourable conditions.

The legend of the moving of Wuhu city nearer the
banks of the Yangtze tells the same story. It is said
that years ago the city was situated many miles up
Wuhu Creek but that as prosperity increased, the local
magistrate saw the need of getting nearer the river. So
he simply issued an order that the town be trans-
planted a few miles down the creek.

And then occurred what must have been a strange
and unique spectacle. The city was picked up,
literally, and carried piecemeal, brick by brick, to her
new site. Can you imagine a horde of people such as
live crowded together in the confines of the smallest
Chinese city, carrying their houses and furnitiu-e and
clothing and pans and kettles to a new homesite ?

26 THE GREAT RIVER

Since that time the foreigner came, and it was
found that the city was still too far from the banks of
the Great River ; so the suburbs began to be built as
developments grew eastward and northward. The
treaty port was opened in 1877. That marked the
beginning of truly prosperous times, because the peo-
ple of Wuhu had always been too conservative to
accomplish much before.

Besides rice, which has always been the great
staple and has overshadowed everything else, rape
and wheat were also grown and, as the business with
the south increased (Canton and Swatow always
purchased great quantities of rice) imports increased
also — opium, cigarettes, kerosene and sugar. The
year 1904 was a record year for rice, 8 J miUion
piculs being exported, besides large quantities
of rapeseed, wheat and cotton, and some beans,
making a total valued at thirty million taels for
the year.

In 1907, rice exports fell off because prices were so
high and because the southern market was closed
when rice began to come in more cheaply and with less
difficulty from Indo-China and Siam.

But the feather business grew up then and has
recently developed into a large industry, including
farms of ducks and geese and plants for sorting the
feathers. Paper and skins and hides increased,
leaf tobacco began to figure in the Customs reports,
rice picked up again in 1910, and then came the well-
remembered year of the revolution, 1911, beginning
with severe floods and heavy rains as a forecast of
impending evil.

THE RICE CENTRE OF THE YANGTZE 27

But, in some respects, Wuhu did not fare so
badly during the revolution. The fact that she
was accessible to deep-draft vessels the year round,
the last port on the Yangtze so served, which is one
of the facts of richest promise for Wuhu, made her
a port of transhipment. Kerosene oil, intended for
Hankow, was dumped at Wuhu — eight million gallons
of it in that year. Those were the days before the
telegraph came and Wuhu did not know whether or
not she had a market for her rice. People who were
living in the Valley at that time were accustomed to
see 30 or more steamers being loaded at one time with
rice for export. The waterways from the city made
Wuhu a distribution centre for the province and her
future importance was secured.

Early in the spring, before the rice crop has been
planted, the rape grows so abundantly that on cloudy
days, the yellow fields look like sunshine and seem
to reflect rays of Hght. In three different ports outly-
ing from Wuhu iron ore is taken from the ground and
exported, chiefly to Japan. Silk cocoons are sent down
the river for sale to the owners of filatures in other
ports. A cotton spinning and weaving mill was built
in 1919 and its 10,000 spindles are busy night and day
working on raw cotton which has been imported from
the United States and Nantungchow. A lamp cliim-
ney factory was also put into operation that same year
and has an output of some 500 dozen lamps daily.
The Wuhu flour mills are probably the most suc-
cessful enterprise of all. In 1909 the largest of these
was burned down, but it was rebuilt and is flourish-
ing. Manufactured eggs from dried yolk and albu-

28 THE GREAT RIVER

men are exported too, while soap and candles made
locally prevent the import of those commodities.

Wuhu is not wholly commercial. There are 14
schools for boys and girls. Man}^ missions are doing
what they can medically, industrially and educa-
tionally for the Chinese. Prison reform began in
1911 and one of the most modern, well- ventilated gaols
in China exists to-day in Wuhu native city. We went
to it over the wide Maloo, which is one of the principal
streets of the town. It was built years ago by famine-
stricken labourers. This street skirts one of China's
picturesque lakes with the inevitable wiUows and
islands bearing cool-looking tea-houses, and the fisher-
man watching his nets. It leads through the suburbs
into the native city through a gate built in the crumb-
ling waU and, once Inside, you feel that you are among
a different people from those outside the gate. When
inland people come to the city, and particularly a
port town, such as Wuhu, it is said that they lose their
fine manners and conservative habits and that the
women go forth into the streets and show their faces
to the world, a thing they would never have thought
of doing in their old homes. The inner city, however,
has a httle less of the riff-raff element that is found
outside, and we thread the narrow streets to the
prison, looking in at the barber shops where the
fastidious Chinese is having his ears cleaned with an
ear-pick, and passing the ever-present chow houses.

Inside the prison at last, we watched the men and
women inmates making match boxes, weaving cloth,
carving wood into furniture and knicknacks of fanciful
design. The rooms are well-ventilated and large.

THE EICE CENTRE OF THE YANGTZE 29

There is plenty of space, court-yards between buildings,
and there is no absolute isolation. The women are
on one side with their looms and wrappers for match
boxes. They work side by side, talk to one another
and need not wear uniform.

Right along the way from the prison is the Temple
of Hell, and pictured there for contemplation are all the
tortures of Hades in images of ugly red and blue
devils. Groups of gods are divided one from another by
wooden fences thus forming separated rooms which
a coolie may rent for his temporary home.

On again from here one arrives at the saddest place
of all — the orphanage. A knocker hangs against the
wall above a stone step built to receive the babies.
The knocker is conveniently placed for the amah just
inside who is wakened by it seven or eight times in
a night when it heralds the arrival of other little
orphans. The mothers or fathers who bring the babies
rarely reveal their identity, so the children's names are
never known. Each one is taken in, put into whatever
tiny crib space is left and assigned to a nurse whose
duty it is to feed and rock him.

And you may go through room after room and
see babies until you think that you must have seen
all there are in the world. A nurse sits and eats her
rice from a bowl, rocking a crib on her left with her
foot and one on her right with her elbow so that she
can shove a mouthful of rice into her own mouth at
every rock, and thus demonstrates that it is possible
to do not only two but several things at one time. In
each crib there are two babies and if one of them is
not yet diseased, he soon will be through contact.

30 THE GREAT RI\^R

But it all, one would suppose, is a step in the right
direction, this effort to preserve the lives of babies,
even if there are already a million or two superfluous
ones in China.

Wuhu is built around hills. The Chinese seek
the levels between them, not realizing the advantages
of breathing more clarified air and opportunely leave the
hill tops to the foreigners. On Dah Kuan Shan are the
homes of the Standard Oil and the Asiatic Petroleum
people. On Che San is the Government School. On
one beautifully wooded hill is the Commissioner's
home, surrounded by picturesque gardens and walks.
Green Hill is the home of some missionaries and near
them a Chinese tenement house is being erected, the
apartments of which will rent for $10 per month.

The hill nearest the river front is I Chi San and
it is here that the Wuhu General Hospital is situated,
erected and conducted for many years through the
untiring efforts of Dr. Hart, who died in Wuhu in
1913 and whose memory is honoured by Chinese and
foreigners alike. Some idea of the valuable work
done in the hospital can be had by a trip through its
wards almost any morning, by a glimpse into the
operating room, where an average of from eight to ten
operations are performed every da}'', and most of all,
by conversation with the contented, busy nurses and
doctors who throw themselves so whole-heartedly into
their work with the conviction of its worth-whileness.
Plans have been made and the money partly raised for
a large new hospital to be built on the same site and
it is hoped that work can soon begin. A wing is to
be built for foreigners. From the top of I Chi San

I

THE RICE CENTRE OF THE YANGTZE 31

a fine view of Wuhu and the river reaching out for
miles in both directions can be had. Just as this
outlook over the city is the most hopeful of any that
may be obtained, so the work that goes on upon that
hill typifies the most hopeful development of Wuhu,
and perhaps of all China, and goes hand in hand with
her prosperity.

CHAPTER VI
An Interlude in a Launch

We had travelled aU day from Wuhu toward
Anking hugging one bank or the other of the Yangtze,
sometimes taking a narrower channel that ran behind
a long island, always watching the life in the villages
as we passed — men and women carrying water from
the stream in new wooden buckets, small boys driving
water buffaloes down and clambering on their backs
to use them as diving platforms, trackers who toiled
along the tow-path sometimes hidden completely from
view behind tall banks of reeds. We wondered what
China could do with such an immense crop of reeds,
but we soon learned that reeds have many purposes.
They give consistency to the mud which forms village
huts. They thatch the roofs of these same huts.
They give heat and fire by which to cook. They feed
the buffalo, too, and are used in innumerable ways
about the village.

About three o'clock in the afternoon we arrived
at Tikiang. All along the banks huge piles of iron
ore were dumped. A Japanese cargo-boat was an-
chored there and there was much business on board
as the cargo came on to be stowed away and as re-
pairs were made around the ship's sides.

Tikiang is a deserted-looking town for all the
business offshore. All the shacks and godowns
are on the verge of the river and seem about to be pushed
in by the high hill which crowds itself so close behind.
But the shacks are in a sad state of dilapidation. They

AN INTERLUDE IN A LAUNCH 33

seem to be saved from the calamity of being blown
away by the protecting presence of the very hill which
threatens them. There is a hotel reputed to be a
fairly good one which makes its appearance from the
centre of tliis huddled town, and on its upper verandah
pots of geraniums are bravely displayed in defiance of
the utter desolation of the scene. It is like a pioneer
town abandoned by everything but hope. Hope,
though, is there in force as is evidenced by the exist-
ence of a company operated with Japanese capital
under Chinese control which is scouring the country
for iron.

There is another company which is entirely Chinese
and there are coal mines farther back in the hills. A
small railway carries the ore back and forth from the
mine to the waterfront and the cars were lined up on
shore. There were piles and piles of the reddish ore,
but we saw no coal.

Later in the afternoon, as we proceeded toward
Anking, cool breezes were blowing over the river.
The fishermen with their nets along the bank were
squatting just as they had all day and though we had
watched carefully whenever a net chanced to be rais-
ed as we were passing by, we had witnessed only one
catch. It was a tiny silvery fish and could be seen
wriggling as it was brought out of the big net by a
dip-net. One would think that the Chinese brought
their little mat tents out along the river's banks and
sat there for days and weeks for the pure joy of it.

We arrived at Tatung after the sun had set and
it was possible only to get a dim outline of a city on

34 THE GREAT RIVER

the bank of the river and also on the island where the
business portion is situated. The city is a great salt
centre and owes its importance to that fact. The
head office for the Wunan district is at Tatung and the
local people are making great protests against its
proposed removal to Wuhu. For though there is tea
of a poor quality exported and some trade passes
through, there is no big trade at Tatung except the
salt.

The year of 1911 will be remembered round
about. Always subject to flood, in that year Tatung
was forced to undergo the misery, poverty and loss of
Hfe, brought on by an abnormal rise of water which
was only a forecast of the further trouble which came
through the famine following the flood and the rebelHon
at the end of the year. The white flag was hoisted
peacefully enough on December 13, but as there was a
dispute between the leaders as to who should hold the
town battle could not be entirely escaped. Li Tsung-
3nien decided that he would take charge and he did so
for nearly a month, when Sun Shao-hou appeared on
the scene with 300 troops and disputed the authority
of the former. Li was of the Mihtary Government and
Sun had been nominated by the Anhui gentry.

The battle was not begun until the Deputy Com-
missioner of the Salt Gabelle had been carried to safety
down the river in his house-boat, and it lasted five
hours, ending in a complete victory for Li, whose
troops outnumbered Sun's by some 500. During
the skirmish, a Chinese gun-boat steamed up and
fired a few shots indiscriminately into the midst of
the battle, but did no damage except to an official's

AN INTERLUDE IN A LAUNCH 35

yamen. After it was over, when it was found that 35
men had been killed, the Likin Commissioner was
formally requested to return, and Li remained in
power.

From Tatung to Anking appears as only a short
distance on the map, but it took all night on the launch,
a beautiful night of stars and fireflies along the bank
and cool breezes over the deck. The next morning
the lovely pagoda of Anking was in sight.

CHAPTER VII

Anking and its Traditions

The little gods that bring change and wreck
tradition are threatening Anking. Enclosing herself
within ancient city walls, denying the admittance of
foreigners, here old China is being bombarded from
within.

Progress and reform are not coming through the
foreign missionary who lives in the midst of this
officialdom, not even through the example of the
foreigner, for though he seeks to teach and aid, he
purposely lags just a Httle behind the new progressive
movement of the Chinese students to avoid the antago-
nism of the people. It is the younger generation, the
students in Government schools, the boys who want
to choose their own wives and the girls who want the
respect and companionship of their husbands and
release from the tyranny of mothers-in-law, who are
bringing it.

Not long ago Anking witnessed a strike of students
who dared to question the Provincial Assembly re-
garding the appropriation of certain funds. This
strike was one of many, typical of the spirit which
pervades this old, proud city and prophetic of the tur-
moil which must come before fundamental changes in
government and custom can take place. The spirit
has been growing throughout China for a long time.
It is not always well-directed and is certainly not
directly constructive, but it is an outgrowth of a worthy

ANKING AND ITS TRADITIONS 37

and sincere rebellion against corrupt official practices
and worn-out customs.

Some time ago the students in the Government
schools at Anking demanded self-government and got
it. The president of the student-body issued passes
for entrance to and from the schools. No one was
allowed to enter without one, not even a master. If
a master offended the students, he was simply dismissed
and there was no use in his returning, because the
students would not receive his instruction. The stu-
dents decided when they would have hoUdays and took
them, held strikes on any and all occasions, and, of
course, their education has suffered increasingly
through it all.

Lacking the stability of age, these youths ruin
what would otherwise be a good cause. In the occur-
rence of the soldier and student riot they lost a great
amount of sympathy they would have otherwise
received by carrying the bloody shirt of an injured
student through the streets and proclaiming that the
student was dead. He had not died and they knew
it, because they had been told emphatically at the
hospital that he was still alive, but they wanted sen-
timent to be on their side and took that method of
getting it.

The same night of the riot a great marriage feast
was going on in the yamen of the Civil Governor in
honour of the son's union with his bride. Foreign wines
were being served with the Chinese feast. So it is that
the old clashes with the new. The walls whose gates
are so carefully locked every night are being
battered down bv modernism.

38 THE GREAT RIVER

These changes, however, have not removed
the fascination of the old city. As you walk
down the principal street, you can look beyond its
hilly convolutions to the corner around which it
disappears in a tangled maze of the colour of
street signs and banners. The city is spread out
over large territory and is not as densely packed
as most Chinese cities. One can see that this is true
more clearly from the top of the old jDagoda so famous
in Anking history.

From that point of vantage one can look over
the surrounding beautiful country to the big lake which
lies at the foot of Big Dragon Mountain, and which is
connected with the city of Anking by a clear, winding
river. It is over this that foreigners go in canoes for
evening picnics and suppers in the spring-time.

The port is protected on the north and west bj'-
ranges of hills, but the east and south are free and
open, with the river stretching out wide and muddy as
far as can be seen, with clear bodies of water along the
edges that appear to be tributaries but are really
lakes. The straw-thatched huts and tiled-roofed,
plastered houses of Anking are crowded on the very
bank of the river much like any other j)ort of the
Yangtze, the solid pictm-e broken here and there by
a church spire or the red roof of a mission building and
the cm-ved roofs of Chinese temples.

The outlying country, cut with streams which are
in turn fringed with willows, and blocked into rice-
fields, bears witness to the fact that we are still in
the rice country, that cereal being the chief export
from the uncommercial port of Anking. We climbed

o

o

o
CO

I

c

UJ

a

a

D

H

ANKING AND ITS TRADITIONS 39

down the steep steps of the pagoda which descend
into the Buddhist temple in the centre of which the
pagoda stands. This temple is one of the cleanest
in China. The images of the gods are not so mutilated
by time. There is a pleasant smell of incense through-
out and every now and again a big iron bell sounds as
the priest who sits beside it strikes it with the hammer.
The clang echoes and re-echoes to long vibrations.
On the front steps are the huge anchors which legend
says were placed there to keep the ship city from floating
farther down the river in the same manner in which
it came to its present site. The pagoda is a beautiful
mast indeed for such a legend, every corner hung with
a tinkling bell.

From the pagoda we went back again through
the narrow streets,, this time by ricsha, through the
west gate to the Dah Kuan Ting or PaviUon of the
Grand View. Here Chinese tea and water-melon seeds
are served on the verandah and the people of the city
come to rest in the shade of the broad eaves. We saw
from here the old yamen grounds where the provincial
mint turns out great quantities of coppers. In the
same enclosure are the electric plant and telephone
company headquarters. Farther away are the grey
soldiers' barracks and on another side and by itself in
the centre of a green plain is a curved temple roof
which marks the centre of a public park built by the
city for the pleasure of the city folk. There are boats
there for use on the lotus lily pond, and zig-zag bridges
and tea pavilions.

From the yamen going back through the west
gate up the broad banking street one soon comes to

40 THE GREAT RIVER

the wholesale section, where prosperous-looking shops
line the wslj. Old residents say that the increasing
prosperity of Anking is plain to see. They point
to buildings all along the way and say that " this is
new this year " and " this has been remodelled sHghtly
after foreign style," etc. The people are wearing
better clothes, too, for there is more money in the city,
and (most significant of all) the little Chinese girls are
coming to the schools in ever-increasing numbers.

The reason for this increase in prosperity is
difficult to discover. Anking is decidedly an uncom-
mercial port. Perhaps it is because retail and whole-
sale business thrives in official cities. Perhaps it is
because the city has room to spread out beyond the
walls and the struggle for existence is not so intense.

The end of the journey is the St. Paul Mission
compound, a most refreshing chmax. Coming from
the glaring, stone-paved streets into this green and
treef ul spot, fragrant with flowers, is like stepping into
another country. But though hfe is happy, it is not
irresponsible within. Just as we were entering we
were stopped to allow a stretcher to pass on its way to
the hospital. The stretcher was improvised from a long
bamboo table turned upside down and the patient
was a woman suffering from phosphorus poisoning.
It is a favourite way for unhappy wives to commit
suicide — by eating red-tipped matches. And the
nurses and doctors of the Mission have a double
responsibihty for they must cure their patient both
physically and mentally, if it is possible.

The hospital and nurses' home are models of
cleanUness and efficiency. Every detail of the work,

ANKING AND ITS TRADITIONS 41

within and without the laboratory, is carefully super-
vised and meticulously tended.

Bishop Huntington, the Rev. Mr. Lee and Dr.
Taylor are perhaps the oldest foreign residents in
Anking and they have thrilling stories to tell of truly
fearful times when Governors and their entire families
were refugees in the compound. One that is told with
especial relish is of the escapade of Dr. Taylor who
pulled a fat Governor over the wall with ropes and then
helped him to escape to a Japanese gunboat on the
river. It is a common failing to believe that adven-
ture is the treasure of the past. But we had reason
to believe that times were stirring again that night
when we were awakened to unmistakable sounds of
riot. It was the students' uprising in which four
were seriously injured, one of their number eventually
dying of his wounds.

No story of Anking would be complete without a
mention of the beautiful cross-stitch work for which
it is well-known. Mrs. Lee of the St. Paul IVIission
began the work years ago. It is done on the finest
linen and the designs are of Peking water carriers and
camel caravans, of Orphan Island on the Yangtze
river and other river scenes, and of pagodas and other
things Chinese. The work now gives employment to
some 300 women who receive better than average
wages. It has progressed rapidly enough and been
successful enough so that the first outlaj^ of capital has
nearly all been paid back.

From the point at which the business becomes
money-making, it is intended that it shall be made co-
operative, providmg better homes for the workers

42 THE GREAT RIVER

and a sinking fund against years of bad exchange or
poor business. With how much more interest the
New York buyer would purchase the charming lun-
cheon sets if he could see the tea shop at the gate of the
compound in Anking where the Chinese women sit and
chatter as they carefully work the reds and browns and
greens and china blues into dainty designs !

I

CHAPTER VIII

KiUKiANG, A Tale of Glory Departed

Years ago, tea and silk merchants, the aristocrats
among the traders, sought the Yangtze Valley for her
wealth. Then the Valley was rich in such and the
great, green island at the northern mouth of Tungting
Lake was cultivated for its choice teas for the fastidious
court of Peking. Then, too, camel caravans carried
bricks of the sun-dried leaves overland from the rail-
road terminus at Kalgan to supply the Russian market,
a thriving and increasing trade until its sudden, abrupt
end. Viceroys with hobbies cultivated mulberry plants
and built silk filatures along the banks of the Yang-
tze Kiang, jealously guarding their secrets from the
foreigner.

But the fascination of such a royal trade was
great and many an obscure port became prosperous by
virtue of it. Such a port was Kiukiang. The slopes
of Lu Shan yielded tea and mulberry plants. The
natives continued their handwork trades in paper, lace
and tobacco. Pine saplings brought from Japan were
used in the afforestation of the hills. In the sixties the
town was thriving and teeming with tradesmen who
supported a Race Club before Hankow ever thought
of her beautiful one of to-day.

And what is Kiukiang now ? A port of tranship-
ment of pottery from Chintehchen, a stopping-place
for seekers of coolness on their way to Kuling — that is
all. The natives have degenerated from the race of
braves who wore emblazoned on their backs and breasts

44 THE GREAT EIVER

the figure of a target, to indolent and poor labourers.
The tea is gone and the tradesmen come no more.

Below Kiukiang along the Yangtze, hes Poyang
Lake — the goal of the rivers that flow from the interior
of Eaangsi. By this route comes the pottery from
Nanchang and there in turn from Chintehchen. By
this route, also, come many other products of the south,
rice and ramie, tobacco and indigo.

By all logical reasoning, Kiukiang should be
situated on the shore of the lake instead of in her
breezeless hollow of the hills. But it is said that
years ago Poyang lake reached far over to the foot
of the Lu Shan hills and then Kiukiang was built
upon the stretch of land beyond. There was an island
in the centre of the lake and temples upon it as
well as on the hills, and sampans carried devout
pilgrims to their places of worship. So it is pictured
in the old Chinese annals of the province with fascinat-
ing sketches. As the lake territory silted up and
moved eastward, Kiukiang remained locked by hills
and cut off from her second waterway.

But what has become of the tea ? Too long the
Chinese people had thought themselves secure in their
ancient possession of a world monopoly. In the
seventies, China produced 86 per cent, of the world's
trade. By the end of the 19th century this had
shrunk to 25 per cent. Farmers disregarded the poorer
qualities altogether and, because they did not use
scientific methods in the cultivation of the better
grades, these, too, gradually came to be inferior.

The Government added a stumbling-block by im-
posing heavy taxation upon the tea and the farmer hand-

A TALE OF GLORY DEPARTED 45

ed down his outworn methods from generation to
generation hke an heirloom. No attempt was made
to cater to a foreign trade which was more and more
placing tea among the necessities of life. Afternoon
tea was becoming an institution throughout
England, Australia and Canada, and as it became
so, Java and Ceylon and India grasped the
opportunity and gradually grew into greater and
greater favour with their lower prices and
better quaUties.

And then came the Russo-Japanese war in
1905 and the Russian market, which until then
demanded so much, ceased entirely. Camel caravan
and cart ceased carrying their bricks of tea
across the Gobi Desert and that trade has never
been revived.

As if these calamities were not enough to kill the
trade, malpractices arose and buried it deep. Dirt
mixed with the tea to increase the bulk and false
samples sent to buyers undermined the trust which
is so important for sound, permanent trade.
Now India, Ceylon, and Java teas have almost
completely usurped the place that those of China
held so long.

The farmer, secure in his belief that the tea in-
dustry is a gift from the gods, goes on planting and
picking as his father and grandfather did before him.
He plants thickly, thinking thus to get the most out
of the land when, in reality, the plants would yield
more heavily if thinned out and distributed over a
greater area. When he finds the plants leaved, he
gathers the leaves all at once, while science and better

46 THE GREAT RIVER

method teaches that they should be carefully selected
and picked at intervals. And he commits a crowning
error when he allows the gathered product to lie in
heaps indefinitely never moving it for rain or humidity
until necessity moves him to do so.

Even with all this, China could no doubt increase
her market for tea if excessive taxation were removed,
because the flavour of Chinese tea is known to be
unmatchable. And so the trade is not hopeless.
Education would do much for the farmers. Experi-
mental schools could be estabhshed, experts could be
sent about the country to plant seed and teach new
methods of harvesting. Education and the removal of
taxation seem to be the only two remedies in sight
for present conditions of the trade.

In the meantime, Kiukiang has slipped into
obscurity. She has had no " muck and truck " to fall
back upon as had Hankow. Held in the hollow of
Lu Shan hills, the breathless heat of her summer is
proverbial. And her halcyon days are over. One
can dip back into the glorious days of the past by
thumbing over the grey and dusty pages of her old
race calendars when visiting horses were brought from
Chinkiang and Hankow and when the captains of the
up and down river boats presented purses for the
races. One can imagine the old-time victoria, that
later gave place to the motor-car with Filipino
chauffeur, driving the ladies to the race course on
the great days.

One can go out along the old city wall to the little
lake with its picturesque bridge and causeway and its
rows and rows of women washing the clothes of Kiu-

A TALE OF GLORY DEPARTED 47

kiang's blue-gowned population. There can be seen
the little island with its ancient pavilion first called
" The Pavilion above Drowned Moon," where Whang
Tan-chuen was met by a fairy and tavight how to
heal the film over his mother's eyes — a bit of the
tradition of the more distant past. But one cannot
bring these things back.

CHAPTER IX

Nanchang the Unassailable

Away down in Central Kiangsi, sheltered by the
Western Hills, Hes a great city, inaccessible, secure,
and untouched by modern thought, a city with a
population which equals that of San Francisco, and
the territory of which spreads far out beyond the city
gates and furnishes raw products for her many Indus,
tries. Every street and temple breathes religious super-
stition and her history is told in legend.

Nanchang is perhaps unique in that it has never
been sacked in the memory of man. When the Tai-
pings years ago came to the wall of Nanchang, they
saw, seated upon it, the figure of a huge man swinging
his feet in the moat. He was apparently selling sandals
three feet in length to the beleaguered citizens. That
was enough for the attacking band. They turned and
fled. The figure of the man was an idol of the good
magistrate, Hsu Hsien-chen, who is worshipped not
only in Nanchang, but all over Kiangsi province and
indeed all over China, wherever Kiangsi people settle.
He was deified because he was so just and kind and
sympathetic, and because he never took " squeeze "
and would not tolerate corruption. He also threw
the flood dragon down a well, telling him as he did so
that he might come forth when the iron tree blossomed.
This well is in the huge Wen Sheo-kung temple in the
centre of the city and, though this temple was burned
down six years ago, it is now being rebuilt at a huge

o

<

NANCHANG THE UNASSAILABLE 49

cost, because the people insist that they cannot be
without it.

Plague and flood and brigandage would come if
there were no Wen Sheo Kung temple in which to
worship in Nanchang. There are quantities of shops
and stands, exhibiting articles of all description,
crowded into the first temple. One is reminded of the
temples of Jerusalem with their money-changers. There
are sidewalk stands under huge umbrellas exhibiting
food-stuffs, articles of clothing, trinkets. Behind the
temple 400 workmen are busy, planing wood, carving
intricate designs in pieces destined for the ceiling and
decorative alcoves ; fashioning marvellous dragons,
lions and unicorns ; and working on the structure.

Nanchang is very wealthy. Porcelains come first
in the list of exports as Nanchang is the distributing
centre for Chintehchen, 100 miles away, one of the
largest potteries in the world. There are a few
porcelain manufacturies in the capital city herseK,
one, which we visited, in a private home. It was in
the home of Mr. Yuan Chin-fang, a wealthy banker,
a scholar and artist, and a connoisseur of porcelains.

When Mr. Yuan appeared, an approachable,
friendly man, fastidiously dressed in a very fine satin
gown, we were served with tea and shown the col-
lection of porcelains arranged throughout the house.
His prize was a huge vase of Kang Hsi blue and white,
about three feet high and twenty inches across, which
was named after Li T'ai Po. IVIr. Yuan values it at
twenty thousand dollars.

Just across the way is the porcelain factory,
with its fascinating tiny bowls filled with colour,

60 THE GREAT RIVER

its rows of brushes of different sizes and lengths, its
unfinished bowls and blow-pipes. We saw the por-
celain dust which is blown over the embossed design
lying in little piles and we looked at many delicately
finished pieces which seemed to carry out the ancient
requirements of being " as transparent as a mirror,
as thin as paper, and as blue as the sky."

Mr. Yuan's other toy is a house built entirely in
foreign style, which he exhibits as a show place with
great pride. The " refreshments " served there were
just the beginning of a day which developed into
a succession of teas.

The factors which contribute toward making Nan-
chang a wealthy city are that her people are peaceful ;
that she has never been looted ; that she does not
harbour a nest of brigands ; that rice and clothing are
cheap, that she is in the centre of an agricultural district
which raises enough food in one year to last for three ;
and that there are no large centres of amusement to
draw the people's money. There are multitudinous
products of the district and the resulting industries,
including rice, bamboo, camphor wood, hemp, pottery,
the manufacture of ink, and silver, brass, copper and
gold shops.

The methods used in these shops are the same
that were used thousands of years ago. We watch-
ed a man drawing silver with a small hand windlass
by pulling it through many holes graduated to smaller
and smaller sizes. Nearby two men were pounding gold
leaf. One had been there twenty years, the other thirty,
steadily hammering for twelve hours a day and for
365 days a year. The gold was placed in layers with

NANCHANG THE UNASSAILABLE 51

black paper between and made into a square package.
This was placed on a stone block and the men sat
on opposite sides of it. One raised his iron mallet
high in the air. The other timed his stroke to the first
man's and placed it between his rythmical beating.
They were pleased at our interest and gave us the iron
mallets to lift so that we could see how heavy they
were.

The worst sweat shop was a tiny room without
ventilation of any kind in which twenty or thirty men
were crowded. They were cutting the thinnest of gold
leaf into symmetrical squares and placing these squares
between thin paper. The ragged edges were cut into-
fine scraps and bundled up to use for plating. A
breath of air in the place would have scattered these
tiny pieces all over the shop.

We then visited a tobacco shop and saw the brown
leaves as they came in from the country. A woman
sat and picked the fibre from the leaves. It was all
cut into pieces and then packed into a press. Two
Httle boys, apprentices, worked this primitive piece of
machinery. It could hardly be called machinery.
They simply jumped on a log that acted as a lever and
drove the boards together which formed the press.

To make the bricks as hard as rocks they worked
a windlass by means of log levers. They stood on the
far end and, hanging by little ropes from the ceiling,
jumped up and down. The bricks after coming from
the press were shaved finely. Baskets of powdered
cameha seed with which the tobacco is diluted are
exposed to view, no attempt being made to conceal
the deception. Everything was brown in the shop

52 THE GREAT RIVER

— the rags that the sturdy-looking boys were wearing,
the floor, the logs and planks, the very bodies of the
workers. At the front of the shop the tobacco is on
sale in packages of varying sizes and likewise the silver
water-pipes which are so popular among the Chinese.

Next, we visited a long, narrow, winding street
filled with bamboo. We seemed to be stepping into an
arbour of dried bamboo trees, whose branches met in
a solid roof at the top. Brooms, baskets, ropes, fish
nets, wheelbarrow yokes, buckets and cups. There
was hemp, too, and some coarse shau-pu cloth made
from that. The street was about two city blocks long.
And the ink-shops, too, were interesting with their
fascinating sticks of ink, Avhich are decorated with
dragons and horses and men and women, and we
learned that the ink was manufactured from the soot
of burned pine trees, mixed with a substance made from
cow's hoofs and horns.

Camphor wood is one of the biggest products of
the territory, boats being made of it and all the
images in the temples being carved from it.

Nanchang is evidently situated in the centre of
one of the richest districts of China. Rice fields
surround the city, and the hills at the back furnish
the camphor and bamboo, and are rich in minerals.
A company operated for gold in the Western Hills at
one time and made a fair profit until the officials
learned of it and *' squeezed" it out of existence.
Since then the minerals have remained untouched.

It seems strange that such a thriving metropoHs
should be hidden away in the hills, with access to it only
by slow boat over Poyang lake or by a most uncom-

NANCHANG THE UNASSAILABLE 53

fortable little train which travels there and back daily.
Perhaps it is due to this inaccessibiUty that it is so
contented, peaceful and prosperous. At the West Gate*
guarding the entrance to the city, is an old pagoda,
topped by a golden ball. This ball guards the scholars
of the city and, if it should ever fall, no more scholars
would come out of Nanchang. The structure that
supports it is so old that it seems ready to tumble
down, and no one is allowed to ascend its tortuous
steps, but still it stands, beautiful against the even-
ing sky, its golden ball untarnished as if to prove the
truth of the avowal of the Chinese, that it is pure gold.

In the centre of the city is East Lake. The island
upon it is named " The Isle of a Hundred Flowers,"
and here, long ages ago, a hermit dwelt for many years
until he was sought out and found to be a weary
official in hiding, when, suddenly as he appeared, he
vanished again.

Camphor wood boats ply slowly over the lake
between the lotus lily pads that are beginning now to
grow abundant, and in these days of the dragon festival
the waters will be scattered with rice because legend
tells of a good man drowned and rice scattered upon
the water to keep the fishes from the body.

Despite Nanchang's peaceful history, in the riot
of 1906 Mr. and Mrs. Kingham, Plymouth Brethren
missionaries, were mistaken for Roman CathoUcs and
killed by the Chinese who were angered because it
was said Catholics had interfered with the administra-
tion of native law. Dr. Ida Kahn, a Chinese physician
well-known in China, conducts a hospital for women
-and children in Nanchang. We called to see her and

54 THE GREAT RIVER

she decided that we should go to the Buddhist nunnery.
" You see, I haven't been there for several years,'*
she said (you could shut your eyes and beheve that.
Dr. Mar}^ Stone was talking) — " and I will take some
tea and some sweets, and, of course, they will be glad
to see us."

So we went out beyond the pagoda and saw a
new product of Nanchang, acres and acres of grave-
mounds, and came to the nunnery which has been
there nobody knows how long. The sisters came
out in their grey gowns with the nine burnings showing
plainly upon their shaved heads, and entertained us
bj^ showing us the temple, serving us a vegetarian
lunch, and exhibiting the coffins — 60 of them — which
contain the bodies of people who died in Nanchang
and are now waiting to be taken to their old homes for
burial. Each coffin has a httle room of its own,
which rents for two dollars a month. It is a
gruesome sight. But there are not many foreigners in
Nanchang. It is a very conservative city and does
not believe in " The Open Door."

^St'^

fti,-

JV.

On the Han River

'^^^7^ji^:

The Bund at Hankow

7'o 7-'((cc /'(iffc jJ

CHAPTER X
Hankow, the Wonder-City of China

Hankow lies at the centre of raili-oads and water-
ways. The Pehan Railway is a link with the north,
the Han River is like a huge cornucopia pouring the
riches of the north-west into her lap, from the west
comes the romantic trade of Szechuan, from the south
across Tungting Lake and by the railway from Chang-
sha, which is stretching out towards Canton, come the
mineral and forest products of Hunan, and the outlet
to the east is by the great Yangtze Kiang to the port
of Shanghai. Thus natural conditions balance them-
selves against the unstable affairs of to-day and make
the future worth while waiting for.

It was tea and silk that started Hankow just as
the rest of the Valley was opened up by the rich
possibilities of the two trades. But these luxuries were
not enough to justify the growth of a great mart of
trade and the real boom began in the later nineties.
Hankow has " muck and truck " to thank for the
progress she has made and the position she has every
right to command in China's business.

So it is that trade reports of to-day read differently
from those of some years ago and include in their lists
of exports such articles as sesamum seed, bristles, goa t
skins, beans, vegetable tallow, beancake, raw cotton,
bones, hides of all kinds and by-products made from
them.

Goat skins have increased greatly as an export
during the last ten years. During war years, the

56 THE GREAT RIVER

demand for these skins was so great that those who
held a monopoly in Hankow demanded two dollars
gold per pound for them. Speculators in New York
were forced to sell at a price lower than that at
which they were purchased, not to mention costs of
transportation.

One of the great industries of Hankow is press-
packing. The huge cement godowns, with the winding
stairs by which coolie labour mounts to the top, and
the tanks upon the top feeding automatic sprinklers,
are among the structures first noticed by the traveller
to Hankow. Incidentally, the automatic sprinklers,
only lately installed, have greatly lessened the fre-
quency of fires in the cotton godowns.

The area immediately surrounding Hankow is level
and cultivated as truck-gardens. Farther away and
nearer the Han river there is hilly country and the
northern slopes of these ridges are cultivated with
wheat and the south slopes with rice. In a country that
is traditionally and historically rice-growing, China still
has the largest wheat-consuming population in the
world. The bran is fed to animals and much of it is
shipped to Japan to be used in the manufacture of beer.

There is great need for intensive farming.
A look at the country leads one to beheve that
it is intensively farmed, but in reality much could be
done to increase the yield of crops by scientific improve-
ment. Deforestation, coupled with prevalent floods,
works destruction and allows the normal moisture
of the soil to be lost. There is no selection of seed or
improvement of methods in harvesting or in packing in
the country districts. It is common enough to see

THE WONDER-CITY OF CHINA 67

cotton dropping out of the shapeless torn bags that
have come in from the country, strewing the streets
with its fleecy softness or afloat on the river — and this
at a time when the southern farmers of America are
getting forty cents a pound for the raw product.

This lack of science and improvement, hand in hand
with pretty general prosperity among the farmers, goes
to prove the wealth of the country and the advantage
of Hankow's position geographically. Along the banks
of the Han river and in the cities of Wuchang and
Hanyang there are bean mills, flour mills, cotton spin-
ning and weaving factories, iron and steel works, a
huge cigarette factory where native leaf tobacco is
used, silk filatures, factories for weaving cloth from
ramie, match factories, etc. Transhipments of medi-
cines from Szechuan, zinc and manganese ore from
Hunan increase the prosperity of the port in normal
times and who knows what wealth has been made and
is constantly being gathered from the illicit trade in
opium ?

The traveller up river, no matter how much he has
been told of the size and beauty of this port which lies
640 miles from the sea, is quite unprepared for the
length of beautiful bund which fronts the concessions
of Hankow, wide and clean and lined with trees, or for
the appearance of the big white buildings facing the
water. The Hongkong & Shanghai Bank is easily
the most beautiful of all. It and the International
Bank, which towers above the former and stands out
from them all to one who views Hankow as his ship
steams up to the wharf, were erected in 1920. Of
the newer buildings, the Russo-Asiatic Bank is the old-

58 THE GREAT RIVER

est and it is still one of the finest. In the same block
is the fine building belonging to Reiss & Co. Customs
headquarters are temporarily in the Hongkong &
Shanghai Bank building, but work is in progress on a
set of buildings to be erected on the old Customs'
site at the very end of the Bund near the spot where
Butterfield & Swire have their offices.

Away at the opposite end of the Bund is the
beautiful old German Consulate building which Chin-
ese labour is busily repairing and preparing for the
future.

At approximately the centre of the length of
bund is the British Consulate compound where a tall
flagpole flies the Union Jack.

The native city of Hankow is dirty and crowded,
and was built without plan or forethought. It was
totally burned to the ground in 1911. Officials were
then urged to take the opportunity of rebuilding with
some system, making the streets wide and straight,
and erecting proper houses. There was hope for a
time of accomplishing that under foreign supervision,
but the greed of the officials overbalanced their public
spirit and to-day the city is worse, if anything, than
before.

Throughout the summer of 1921, the city was
distracted with the fear engendered by frequent loot-
ing raids of bandits up and down the river. Natives
were to be seen crowding through the gates into the
concessions carrying their baggage or sending it before
them on a coolie's back, their faces worried and sad.
Men, women and children were seeking safety, the
cooHes charging them outlandish prices for their labom-.

THE WONDER-CITY OF CHINA 69

foreign firms charging them still more outlandish prices
for the use of their godowns in which to store their
boxes, bundles and bags.

But as one goes riding through the streets of the
concessions in a ricsha or in one of Hankow's queer
conglomerate collection of motor cars, one is impressed
with a sense of relief, a kind of peace and rest that
might come with a visit to a clean homeland, a relaxa-
tion from a habit of tensing the muscles against the
sights and smells of China. There are, or were, five
concessions in Hankow : the British, the French, the
Japanese, the Russian and the German. The German
has become the First and the Russian has become
the Second Administrative District. The Americans
live throughout the French and Russian districts.
Riding through the Russian concession, one is often
greeted by the pleasant fragrance of tea leaves issuing
from the factories that thrust themselves up like old
fortresses along the way.

The British Consul and Municipal Council operate
very efficiently throughout their own concession with a
Volunteer Fire Department, a police force, and an
exceptionally fine Health Department. The Health
Department has so successfully rid their section of mos-
quitoes as to make it the envy of all the others. Other
nationals have their consuls and each concession has
its own poHce force and volunteer fire department.

The crown of Hankow is her race club. Without
it the foreign women of the community would find
no relief from the excessive heat of summer ; without
it the men would grow fat and lazy and the city would
resolve itself into gossiping and gossip-creating circles.

60 THE GREAT RIVER

But it is impossible to imagine Hankow without
the Race Club. It is the centre of everything. It is
very nearly unique. Where else in the world can you
find a Club supported by so many different nationals
and offering so many different sports and amusements ?
There is polo and horse racing, clay-pigeon shooting,
swimming and tennis, bowling, golf, cricket and base-
ball, dancing — in the winter over the swimming bath,
in the summer in the large drawing room just off the
verandah — and there is an orchestra which furnishes
classical music part of the afternoon and dance music
in the later hours and whose Sunday afternoon con-
certs are well worth hearing.

The Club is approached by a long shady drive
which seems to transport you from China to the
Homeland. Every day the parking grounds are filled
with motor-cars, French and British and American
makes, interspersed with types one never saw or heard
of. In the hot days of summer everyone is in
the swimming bath. The water is purified by violet
rays and is constantly being changed and is also
analysed microscopically by the physicians of the port.

From the bath, one can go out upon the bowling
green or the tennis courts, or on to the verandahs
and lawns that are constantly filled with colourful
groups of people who are one and all grateful and
appreciative and proud of this beautiful haven of
comparative coolness from the stifling heat of the
Yangtze valley.

E

CHAPTER XI
Hanyang, the Hinge of the Three Cities

Just where the Han river flows into the Yangtze,
behind a forest of masts, hes the city of Hanyang,
spread out at the foot of Tortoise Hill and hanging
over the edge of the two rivers that form its southern
and eastern boundaries. A point of great strategic
importance — far more so than either Hankow or
Wuchang — it seems to form a hinge between the two
cities and yet command them. Any army that could
hold the hill which overlooks the crowded shacks of the
city would be in a position of great power — the Yangtze
could be commanded in both directions and the Han
River held, thus controlling the food supplies that come
in such abundance from the north-western districts.
For, though the broad sweep of the Yangtze — a mile
wide at that point — seems to make the narrow, crowded
mouth of the Han look small and insignificant, yet
it is an artery of commerce by which junks bring down
Chinese products in great abundance in exchange for
foreign imports. In the interior, drained by the
Han, there are not only missionary stations but Ameri-
can and British representatives of great oil, tobacco
and sugar firms.

In 1911, when Yuan Shi-kai's army came through
the Race Club at Hankow, mowed down the Hunan
army with its machine-guns, and then crossed the
river and captured Hanyang, the possession of Wu-
chang by the Republican army lost its value. That
incident alone proved the importance of the hill. In

62 THE GREAT RIVER

the Taiping time, it was captured again and again.
Now, the Chinese officials seem to reaUze its value
well, for they will not allow the most innocent visitor
to mount the hill, nor will they permit him to go into
the arsenal, which is working overtime, at the expense
of some Chinese general, in turning out its weapons.

It was in Hanyang that the Rev. W. Arthur
Cornaby, who understood so much about less well-
known parts of China and Chinese life, lived and worked
for so many years. The city itself is low, the streets
are slimy with the dirty water slopped from the
buckets of the water coolies. In high water time, these
streets are often flooded.

Beyond the city and farther up the Han are the
great Hanyang Iron and Steel Works so well-known in
China and in other countries too. We went with the
manager, ]Mr. Z. T. K. Woo, through the works. We
walked inside the huge blast furnaces which are waiting
now for repairs and saw the bellows-like top which holds
the ore and the coke and the flux within its expanded
sides, seamed and brown, down to the narrower
cyHnder at the bottom, pierced with holes for the outlet
of melted iron. Outside, lining the railway, are piles
and piles of coke and limestone and ore.

Beyond the railway, we went into rooms where
huge engines were heating air for the blast furnaces.
Here all sensations were drowned in noise. Then
on again to the platform which overlooks the blast
furnaces which are in use now. Here one sees the iron —
real lava — pouring out in seething waves over the edge
of an embankment into a huge cauldron. We waited
there until the iron was ready to be released from the

THE HINGE OF THE THREE CITIES 63

blast furnace. A man pushed and prodded the opening
with a long iron until, in a burst of blinding brilliance,
it rushed forth, heating the air all around, throw-
ing off yellow sparks in every direction and seeking
its pathway down the canals that had been laid for
it and on into innumerable forms. It was a sight to
watch breathlessly. When all the forms were filled,
the "blowing out" took place. The result was a
gorgeous display of fireworks and then the hole was
closed with sand and mud. With a shrill whistling,
the process was ended for another few hours.

Marvelling, we commented on the confidence of the
Chinese who worked so familiarly with this white-hot
substance. To that, Mr. Woo answered, " The Chinese
are not really cowards. They are afraid of the torture
and persecution that has been the history of Chinese
ofl&cialdom, but they are not cowards."

Riding on an elevator which was accustomed to
transporting wheel-barrow loads of ore and coke, we
went to the very top of a blast furnace where the great
lid was lifted automatically to allow the piled-up
materials to slide down into the burning mass below.
Whenever the lid came up, a volume of gas came out
great enough, it seemed, to asphyxiate the workmen
in close range. From the platform above the furnace,
one can look down upon the crowded river below and
upon the great watery province behind where all
streams run toward the Yangtze.

After coming down from this high point we
wandered through the steel works where we viewed
the boiling, spluttering, mass of whiteness through a
piece of blue glass ; there were huge blocks of steel

64 THE GREAT RIVER

being rolled out and chopped into proper lengths for
rails ; and in the foundry steel was being poured into
moulds of all shapes and sizes.

Mr. Woo explained that as this was the only
iron and steel works in China, it was expected to
supply every size and description of bolt, nut and
screw, and that many of the moulds which had to be
made were only used for one order. " That," he said
"is just one of the difficulties which confronts a
pioneer works."

There is much talk concerning the new works
which are to be erected at Tayeh. Tayeh is 60 li
down the river and it is from there that the iron ore
for the Hanyang works is obtained. The latter works
are not in a favourable economic position, as they are
placed between their sources of supply rather than at
one end or the other, which latter position would cut the
cost of the shipment of cargo in half. As it is, coke is
brought from Pinghsiang in Kiangsi province, through
Hunan to Hanyang. The Hunan Government extorts
a ridiculous revenue in return for the right to carry
the coke inside the boundaries of its state.

The ore, then, comes from Taj^eh and after
manufacture, goes down the river again — a double
trip ! The Tayeh works, which are planned to be
the equal of any in the world, will find many of these
obstacles eliminated — but not the Japanese obstacle.

Years ago, the Chinese Government secured
a loan from Japan and used the Hanyang Iron
Works as security. They then made a contract to
supply pig iron to Japan at a certain low rate inde-
finitely. Since the Great War the price of iron has risen

Hanyang Iron Works

Hanyang's Forest of Masts

'/'() Fiire l'(t{/r 6^

THE HINGE OF THE THREE CITIES 65

tremendously of course, with the result that Hanyeh-
ping has continued to lose steadily through a contract
made by short-sighted men. Moreover, the terms of
Group III of the Twenty-one Demands, if enforced
to their fullest power, would actually prevent any
foreigner other than Japanese or Chinese from opening
up any mines in all the region about Hanyang, about
the Pinghsiang coal mine and the Tayeh iron mines !
They have already made the Hanyehping company,
which is Chinese, co-operative with the Japanese,
with the latter holding the balance of control — a
clause which simply excludes all nationals except
the Japanese from entering into industrial development
about this part of the Yangtze, which has long been
known as the sphere of British influence !

The Hanyang Iron Works has greatly improved the
condition of their workmen and also, as a result,
the condition of the women of that district. The
Y.M.C.A., which works in conjunction with the same
organization in Hankow, is doing progressive work in
Hanyang. Rest rooms for the workmen, good living
conditions, and all the things that go with a Y.M.C.A.
are offered.

Going back from Hanyang to Hankow in a launch
belonging to the Hanyehping company, threading
our way through the throngs of sail boats and sampans,
we had a last impression — this time of wasted labour.
These few launches which carry passengers to and from
the iron works give the only efficient service obtainable
between the two cities. All other travel is by saiUng
boat or by half-seaworthy launches. Thej'' are crowded
with Chinese and very slow, particularly during high

66 THE GREAT RIVER

water season. And the Han could so easily be spanned
by a bridge, with probably a small proportion of the
money which is now being expended at the arsenal
through the petty jealousies of China's generals !

CHAPTER XII

Wuchang — the Sure Foundation of
A Dream

The future is a thing of dreams, of hopes, and of
imaginings. But always they must be based on some-
thing, if they become speculations.

Standing on Serpent Hill which cuts Wuchang in
half, one can see that this dream of the Three Great
Cities is based on something sure and enduring. To
the right of one, facing the river, are the imposing
buildings of Boone University holding within them the
most dynamic force of Wuchang in the persons of its
students. In front, and very near, too, the smoke
stacks of the hemp and cotton mills thrust themselves
between the sweeping river and the vision of the
onlooker. Beneath his very feet is the tunnel which
cuts through the ridge and saves many thousands of
steps for weary feet, and behind and to the left, old
China exists as she did thousands of years ago,
behind the Flower Hill and its hillside gardens the
pagoda overlooking ancient tombs.

Great provinces to the north, the south and
especially to the west, are pouring their resources into
the central port made by the Wuhan cities. Since
foreign business first entered China, great things have
been prophesied for these cities and never, in any in-
stance, have they failed their prophet. No amount of
temporary business depression can dim the truth of that.

The Wuchang side may, perhaps, be said to have
the greatest hope of all. Hankow is cramped for

68 THE GREAT RIVER

room to spread out. She is being strangled by the
sides of the triangle that form her boundaries — the
railway embankment, the Han river and the Yangtze
Kiang. Beyond the railway (which is the only hope
for future development) speculators have bought up the
land and refuse to let it go at reasonable prices. It is
low-lying, also, and would require expensive elevating.
There is enough anti-foreign f eeUng among the Chinese,
too, to cause agitation every time the concessions
seek to expand.

But Wuchang is quite different. Walking along
the wall which skirts the hillside gardens, one sees
stretching out away south into the distance, the rail-
way to Changsha. Already it is talked of as a trunk
line by which to link the north with the south, to which
feeders may come from many districts bearing many
products.

Near the head of the railway, there is ample room
for growth. And there is deep water within a
short distance from the railway head, which makes
transhipping conditions unequalled. The Hankow
side is being steadily silted up. There is more reason
to picture deep-draught steamers berthing at Wuchang
in the future than to expect them to continue in the
old way. One needs only the thought of the railway
link to the south and that of easy transhipment from
Hankow, to picture a mart of trade lying on the right
bank of the Yangtze which might rival any other in
the world. That is the future. Now what of the past ?

Wuchang is and has been for many years, the
centre of things political. It was one of the largest
bases of the Hunan Volunteer Army which eventually

THE SURE FOUNDATION OF A DREAM 69

overthrew the Taipings. Years later, under the idea-
listic rule of Viceroy Chang Chih-tung, the city branch-
ed out commercially and grew and prospered. It is
the city which is known as the cradle of the revolution
and it was until a year ago the seat of power of the
third super-Tuchun of China and so bids fair to take
an active part in whatever upheaval is forthcoming in
the unreadable future. So it is that Wuchang plays
her part as the political factor in the tripartite cities.

Viceroy Chang Chih-tung, of pre-Republican days,
was a man of strange personaUty — an impractical
dreamer, possessed of the spirit of the reformer and
promotor, but without either the stability to stick to
one thing or the foresight to fit his plans with con-
ditions. When he decided to start the iron and steel
mills at Hanyang he sent an order to England for
blast furnaces. The manufacturers wrote back for a
sample of the ore. They manufactured two types of
plant, each suitable to a distinct type of ore. But as
Chang Chih-tung had not as yet found the ore he could
not send a sample. He insisted, however, on having
the plant, and one was finally sent out. But it was
not of the type suitable for the ore later discovered !
One can see these furnaces to-day at the Hanyang Iron
Works. They have been turned upside down and are
being used in another capacity than that for which
they were intended !

Chang Chih-tung was essentially a man of hobbies.
In Canton, where he was Viceroy prior to being sent to
Wuchang, it was schools. He sent for foreign instructoi^
and began preparing for their arrival. Suddenly, he was
transferred to Wuchang. When the foreign professors

70 THE GREAT RT\rER

arrived, there was no post for them, since in China no
new ruler ever carries out his predecessor's plans. The
story is told of one of these — a professor of law, who
resented having made a useless trip to China, who wrote
to Chang Chih-tung asking him where he would find his
employment. The Viceroy wrote back — and asked the
professor of law whether he knew anything about plant-
ing mulberries ! The Viceroy was at that time em-
barked on his new hobby — the cultivation of silkworms.

It is said that this energetic man was never really
wealthy, since his hobbies were a great drain on his
purse, but that yet he was never in want. The
story of his resource is also characteristic. He had
several boxes sealed with the official seal. They were
very heavy boxes and they were never opened. Wlien-
ever he was in need of funds, these went to the pawn
shop and the Viceroy received great sums of mone}''.
Always they were redeemed and later pawned again.
But it was whispered that there was nothing in them
more valuable than bricks !

He had a plan for doing away with the Japanese
invading army in '94. He was going to build traps at
Peitaiho and Chinwangtao for the Japs to fall into
as they landed !

All this is not by way of belittling the accompHsh-
ments of Viceroy Chang Chih-tung. He made some
very real improvements and started industries that
have played a large part in the development of Wu-
chang. He built two museums — one for foreign articles,
one for Chinese — that were the marvel of all who saw
them. The fact that he had a secretary like Ku
Hung-ming, who brought forth the priceless " Papers

THE SURE FOUNDATION OF A DREAM 71

from a Viceroy's Yamen," is enough to put him on the
pages of history for ever. And, in spite of being anti-
foreign, he brought in much western training wherever
he could.

To prove his industrial energies, there are the
cotton mills. The Hupeh Government Cotton Mill,
which he started, has been running for about 30 years
and during the last few years has been so successful
that dividends have averaged nearly 100 per cent.
This is without foreign supervision and the yarn
turned out is of the best in China. About 8,000
workmen are employed and besides their salary, which
amounts to only six or seven hundred cash a day, they
receive a handsome amount at the end of each year
in bonuses. The present general manager of this mill
is also the chairman of the Wuchang Chamber . of
Commerce, Mr. Hsu Yung-ting, one of the finest citi-
zens of the district.

The cotton mills, all together, comprise the biggest,
most successful industry of Wuchang and one which is,
in fact, growing to increasingly greater proportions in
Wu-han. The Hankow Dee Yee Cotton Mill, with
40,000 spindles and 500 looms is just being completed
and is, possibly, the most up-to-date mill in China
to-day. This is the mill that the traveller first sees
to his left as he comes up the river to Hankow. They
are large, prosperous-looking, redbrick buildings.
There are two other cotton mills in Hankow that are
in the process of erection. Deliveries on machinery
are slow but the companies are enterprising. The
Chen Huan buildings are already erected, the Yu Hwa
buildings are going up and the company which owns

72 THE GREAT RIVER

the Dee Yee Mill has ordered machinery for a second
Hankow mill to have the capacity of 40,000 spindles.
Pohtically, Wuchang is very much the centre of
things. History has always found it so and history
is likely to repeat itself in this instance. Its growing
commercial importance will only serve to strengthen
it as the centre of things political. Therefore it behoves
all eyes to be turned toward Wuchang, the greatest
in possibilities of the Wuhan triumvirate cities.

CHAPTER XIII

Wuchang After the Storm

It was a fortunate or unfortunate circumstance, as
you please to look at it, that we arrived in Hankow the
day following the looting and burning of Wuchang by
Tuchun Wang Chan-yuan' s most trusted troops. The
occurrence followed closely on the heels of the Ichang
pillage, indeed, just after the Ichang looters had
arrived in Wuchang on the str. Kweilee. Whether
this group of bandits had anything to do with instigat-
ing the riot or not was unknown. They were not
known to have taken part. The cause of the pillage
of Wuchang was the discontent among the troops of
Tuchun Wang in regard to payment. They had been
accustomed to receive an extra monthly allowance of
two dollars and when this was taken away from them
on account of the Tuchun's supposed own shortage of
allowance from the Central Government, trouble re-
sulted. Even Governor Wang's own bodyguard were
inclined to mutiny when fighting began outside the
yamen, but it is reported that the Governor himself
trained a machine-gun upon them, threatening to kill
them all for their disloyalty. However, there were
not enough troops remaining loyal to drive the looters
from the city, who were evidently well organized, and
a wholesale massacre was only prevented when Tuchun
Wang granted the bandits unhampered exit from the
city with whatever loot they had collected, only
requiring the giving up of their weapons. The short-

74 THE GREAT RIVER

sightedness of the policy of accepting such terms, from
the standpoint of the looter, was proved later, when a
trainload of them were mown down by the 4th Division
at Siaokan, without the opportunity of firing a single
shell in return. The total loss resulting from the
pillage of Wuchang on this occasion was estimated at
30,000,000 taels. The area most seriously affected was
that in which the mint, the various banks, and the
silver and gold-shops stood.

To visit a looted city shortly after the event is the
only adequate way of gaining any idea of what it is
like, except, of course, actually to be present during
the pillage, which is less comfortable.

Though the streets were fairly well cleaned up of
the bodies of victims and little piles of straw filled with
incense were being burned to clarify the atmosphere,
yet here and there a headless body was still lying
exposed as an example to wrongdoers. The towns-
people were careful to remove their own dead as quickly
as possible but to allow those of the looters to remain
without " a decent burial " for a longer period. We
counted the smouldering remains of 40 shops which
had lined the principal street. They were so com-
pletely razed to the ground that it was barely possible
to make out the division of a wall between each. In
spite of a heavy rain, smoke was still rising from the
masses of dt'hris and shattered remains of building
materials. Boys and men were busily engaged in
raking over the ashes in a hunt for what might be
found of some value. Small good it did them as anj^one
discovered in the possession of loot was executed with-
out mercy later on.

WUCHANG AFTER THE STORM 75

We visited many shops which had not been burned
but which were in a sad mess of wreckage. These had
been entirely despoiled of their goods. The shelves
were absolutely bare and the plate glass fronts were,
in every case, broken into tiny pieces, and the apertures
boarded up. At the rear of one mass of ruins a poor
old woman was attempting to make some sort of home
by boarding off a corner. The would-be floor was a
pile of boards and mortar and dc^hris of all kinds.

The principal buildings looted were the Provincial
Bank which was burned afterwards, the Mint, and
the Provincial Assembly Hall, where the safes were
broken into. The residence of members of the Pro-
vincial Assembly was also attacked. Many large
jewellery shops were looted, several restaurants and
pawn shops were also pillaged. Whenever a private
home was entered, the women's jewels were taken and
in case resistance was offered, the hinderers of the
bandits' progress were killed with no compunction.

The ferries crossing from Wuchang to Hankow
were busy all the following day carrying the frightened
inhabitants away from the scene of destruction who
fled carrying what baggage they had towards the
foreign settlement across the way for safety. And all
day long sampans could be seen floating down the
river filled with loot and even with soldiers with bags
of riches upon their knees.

The streets of Wuchang were being guarded by
soldiers whose discontent at their own poverty-
stricken lot in contra-distinction to their escaped
comrades, showed plainly upon their faces. During
the entire raid of the town, four Chinese gunboats and

76 THE GREAT RIVER

two cruisers were lying off one of the city gates, but
they made no attempt to keep order.

Retribution to the looters, though slow in coming,
appeared finally in full vengeance. On the night of
June 8, the pillage of Wuchang having occurred the
night before, a trainload of them were proceeding
northward on the Peking-Hankow Railway. Acting
upon orders which were wired ahead by Tuchun Wang
Chan-yuan, the train was run onto a siding at Siaokan
station and disconnected from the locomotive which
proceeded ahead. The train was immediately sur-
rounded by troops of the 4th Division armed with
rifles and a plentiful supply of machine-guns. A perfect
torrent of bullets was released upon the train, simply
slaughtering the looters who were packed tightly inside.
No escape was possible and, according to the report of
an eye-witness of the scene of the butchery shortly after
the event, " the train was riddled with bullet holes,
the even rows of which were clear indication of being
the result of machine-gun fire. From the holes and
from the doorways of the cars blood was dripping pro-
fusely, while inside dead bodies were piled upon one
another as they had fallen. Along the embankment
outside there were also a great number of dead, some
lying singly and others in knots of as many as eight or

ten Not far from the siding a number of

soldiers were engaged in digging a large trench grave
for the ultimate disposal of the corpses." The number
of dead estimated as having been actually seen was 350.

CHAPTER XIV

YocHOw, THE Storm-beaten Gateway to Hunan

YocHOW stands at the gateway to Hunan — and
suffers all the troubles of a gatekeeper. When the
Taipings failed to capture Changsha in 1852, they had
better success with the less-protected Yochow and
wreaked their vengeance there. The port also had
its share of trouble during the Yangtze riots of the
nineties. Just as Hunan has always been in the lime-
light in all movements of any kind throughout China,
Yochow has been the unnoted sufferer. For forty years
Hunan dominated the empire. The Hunanese have
been the stalwart braves, the scholars, the diplomats.
When foreigners finally entered the province, after
many years in which they had been successfully shut
out, Yochow was the preliminary port of entrance —
and they came in large numbers and under the protec-
tion of Viceory Chang Chih-tung, for the Hunanese
were distinctly anti -foreign. Nineteen hundred and
eleven found the Hunanese the strength of the Re-
volutionaries. Sadly enough, the very hope of the
new repubUc was destroyed when the army of Hunan
braves was massacred by the ImperiaUst machine-
guns.

And since then, Yochow has been looted again
and again. Governor Chang Chin-yao reduced the
city to poverty in 1920 by allowing his soldiers to
plunder at will, at the same time that he (the Governor
of the province) was sending out of Hunan shipload
after shipload of rice to be sold for his own profit.

78 THE GREAT RIVER

In June, 1920, an American citizen, Mr. Reimert, was
murdered in cold blood as he stood in the gateway
of the mission compound, in an effort to protect
Chinese refugee women who had fled there. Yo-
chow's story in the later days is a tale of constant
plunder and outrage. Now its very poverty should be
its best protection. And so it would have been had
it not been so unfortunately near the frontier line
between Hunan and Hupeh in 1921. Having ceased
to be a tempting morsel for loot-lusty soldiers, it
became a frontier battleground.

Your up-river steamer calls at Chengling. This is
just around the bend from Yochow. Yochow's foreign
population live mostly at Chengling. Upon the top of
the hill is the Commissioner's house. A sloping bank
leads to the water's edge. Below is the wharf and
the Customs office. The water level of the river is
plainly marked outside on a large white board. The
day on which our steamer arrived, a bonfire at the
back of the buildings sent up yellow-reddish flames —
just a few thousand dollars' worth of opium going
up in smoke. The steamer only pauses long enough
to take on and discharge whatever passengers there
are. In a few minutes around the bend you come
upon Yochow, on the eastern bank of Tungting Lake.
Knowing its story, you can read into its appearance,
an impression of spiritlessness and despondency.

But Yochow has its brighter side in history.
In the old days, the very best bamboo grew in the hills
at the back of the city. Across the way the island of
Kuinshan became celebrated for its rare green tea.
The tea and the bamboo were cultivated for the

THE STORM-BEATEN GATEWAY TO HUNAN 79

Imperial court of Peking. On the island is to be found
the memorial stone erected to the memory of the two
wives of Emperor Shun (1200 B.C.) who drowned
themselves in their own tears at their grief over their
husband's death.

For Yochow is claimed the honour of being near
the spot from which the legend which the dragon
festival commemorates is supposed to have come.
Emperor Chii Yuan believed that of all the world he
alone was good. He told his troubles to a friend who
advised him to be wicked also so that he might thus
reduce his soUtude. But Chii Yuan could not bring
himself to do that and finally, in the despair caused by
his own goodness, he clasped a large stone and jumped
into the lake. So now on the 5th day of the fifth
moon, all the little paper boats go out on the lake
carrying lanterns to Ught the drowned soul of Chii
Yuan on its way.

Even more modern Hunan has its tale of a good
man. What would Emperor Chii Yuan think, if he
could look back now on Feng Yu-hsiang, the Christian
general who seems as alone in his goodness as any
Chinese General could be ? Feng Yu-hsiang in recent
years held southern Hunan and made of the district
around Changteh a model territory. He leads his
soldiers in prayer, requires them to attend church
service, conducts revivals much after the manner of
Stonewall Jackson, confessing his own sins in public
prayer-meeting with his soldiers. He has an army of
men who neither steal nor persecute innocent civilians,
and, moreover, do not indulge in personal vices such
as gambUng, cigarette smoking and the like. Their

80 THE GREAT RIVER

spare time is occupied in such innocent amusements as
gossiping and gymnastics.

Each culprit who is caught smoking a cigarette
is made to stand in a circle marked out upon the
ground and wear about his neck a cigarette — the brand
of his dishonour — while his more virtuous comrades
take the opportunity to laugh him to scorn.

General Feng always manages someway to get his
soldiers paid regularly. He at one time held up a train
and seized $200,000 belonging to the Bank of China ;
paid his soldiers with $100,000 ; returned the remainder
and wired his apologies to the Bank explaining that
these measures were necessary in order to keep his
soldiers from mutiny. The country around Changteh
had been so admirably ordered while these northern
troops under their eccentric leader were there that it
was the envy of all the country. When they finally
were taken north in 1920 to engage in frontier warfare,
there was a great scramble among all the soldier bands
to get into this rich territory which had remained so
long unlooted. Feng Yu-hsiang's very jfigure is com-
manding— taU and bony, well built ; he is absolutely
serious ; nor does he stand on the street corners and
thank God that he is not a sinner.

Yochow was at one time a port of some importance
for the transhipment of materials from interior Hunan.
But since Changsha became a treaty port and the rail-
way from Wuchang extended to that city, Yochow has
lost much of her former importance. Steamer traffic is
only possible in the summer to these ports. There are
wood oil and minerals and camphor to be brought out.
But Yochow figures only shghtly in that trade now.

THE STORM-BEATEN GATEWAY TO HUNAN 81

The most picturesque cargoes which pass the neg-
lected port of entrance to Hunan are the great timber
rafts that move slowly toward the Yangtze from Kuei-
chow by the Yuan river and from West or East Lake
in Hunan by the many rivers that cut that province.
Upon these rafts whole villages of people live, carrying
on the every-day tasks of life exactly as though they
were on shore. A huge sweep, like a telegraph pole,
sticks out at the back and is used to navigate this
clumsy craft. As huge as these rafts look above the
water, they appear small in comparison with their real
size for they are proportioned like an iceberg, with huge
tiers of logs beneath. The ratio is about three to
eleven, so that there is not quite four times as much
below as above.

These rafts are built in varying sizes. For in-
stance, a raft 280 feet in length may be 1 10 feet across
and 22 feet from deck to keel. The centre pin is made
of camphor wood as is also the capstan on the
bow of the raft. It is because of the great weight
beneath the water that these boat-villages are so
difficult to navigate and that steamers must exercise
great care in passing them.

Coming into Tungting Lake opposite Yochow, we
passed many of these rafts. Children were playing at
the water's edge. We could see the chickens and pigs
seemingly as much at home there as on land. The
day's washing was placed to dry — in blue patches on the
matshed houses. The crew, which sometimes numbers
a hundred men, were working at the great yuloh.
Women at their work — drawing water, pounding
clothes — were at the same time caring for the children.

82 THE GREAT RIVER

Yochow is a looker-on at all this. But it is not
fair to say that its days of usefulness are past. What
city of whatever promise could survive the lootings and
massacres that Yochow has suffered ? Perhaps when
a new rc'gime, which fulfils its promises, comes into
power, Yochow will prove itself worthy of its position.
For it is served by the railway which is reaching
southward to Canton and stands in a position of great
importance at the head of Tungting Lake as a port
of entrance to rich Hunan.

CHAPTER XV

Changsha

Changsha is like a city in the clouds. Uninspired
guide books say that Yolushan, the pine-covered peak
across the river, is only 800 feet above the sea. But
standing on the ridge which joins that mount with
those beyond, one sees tiny lakes that mirror the
slopes above, catches glimpses of green valleys between
distant ridges — away back over the watershed — and
traces with one's eyes the winding course of the great
Siang, swelling to its unaccustomed volume of water, all
of which gives the impression of great altitude. The
character of the tall pines heightens the impression and
the misty atmosphere momentarily breaks into rainfall.

The city of Changsha lies spread out along the
opposite bank of the Siang, the smokestacks of her
antimony and zinc smelting works forming grotesque
outlines above the roofs of crowded houses. Behind
the smoking stacks, a sister ridge of hills rises as a
background and protection to the city. At the
northern end of the city the red roofs of the Hunan-
Yale College of Medicine lying in more open spaces is
distinguishable.

This inland metropolis lies fifty miles south of the
southern tip of Tungting Lake. One sees silvery
streams which flow toward Changsha from the farthest
limits of the watery province of Hunan, making this
city its economic centre. Of all the eighteen provinces
of China, a country better watered than any in the
world, Hunan is the most abundantly supplied with

84 THE GREAT RIVER

rivers. There are the three great rivers, the Yuan,
the Tsu Shui, and the Siang, the largest of these being
the Siang, upon which Changsha is built. The Siang
makes its way, broad and deep, carrying large river
steamers and launch, junk and raft traffic to the great
Tungting Lake, where all the rivers join to emptj^
later into the Yangtze Kiang. Tungting Lake covers
an area of nearly 4,000 square miles. In crossing it
one sees vast expanses of water, dotted with islands
and reefs all of which are intensely cultivated like the
mainland.

From the topmost peak of Yolushan, one looks
down upon the long, green island lying in the centre
of the Siang River, where the foreigners of Changsha
have made their homes. Glimpses may be caught of
the red-tiled roofs among the trees, open spaces which
are tennis courts or new building sites, and strips of
white stone bunding. Often, when the Yangtze River
is unusually high during the summer months and its
overflowing waters dam the outlet of the Siang, the
houses on the narrow island are so completely sur-
rounded by water that sampans are poled to the front
doors and are moored there, and every back-yard is a
swimming bath.

The smoking stacks of the smelting works, so
insistent a part of the bird's-eye- view picture, proclaim
the richness of the hills which surround one, in range
after range — the rice fields between and the grain-
cultivated slopes hiding the minerals within. It is
claimed that this district surpasses any other of like
area in the world in the richness of its mineral deposit
and that, though the smelting works turn out pig lead

CHANGSHA 85

and pure antimony and the cargo-ships carry out an
average of over 200 tons daily of ore to be shipped to
Belgium, France and Germany for smelting, the surface
of this vast area is scarcely scratched. The local smelt-
ing works are only producing to half their capacity
and the mines which feed them are practically un-
developed because of lack of capital. Silver and gold
ore lie untouched in the hills. These same hills of
Hunan are well forested and furnish lumber, wood and
oil of excellent quality.

Yolushan affords a view of Changsha which reveals
the beauty of its setting among the hills and waters of
Hunan. A ride around the island affords more in-
timate ghmpses of tropical verdure, groves of graceful
bamboo, and intriguing steps and paths which lead
from the water's edge into a tangle of fohage on the
bank. Foreigners who follow the beaten paths of the
railway to North China and of the Yangtze to West
China escape the pleasure of a visit to these inland
cities, which have a charm and surprise of their own.
Changsha is coming constantly nearer, however, as the.
steamers increase in number and the railway schedule
becomes more certain.

The Yale-Hunan College of Medicine has made the
city of Changsha known in many parts of the world.
It is one of the greatest accomplishments of foreigners
in China. It is a monument to co-operative Chinese
and foreign endeavour. Now, in the 16th year of its
existence, the college occupies a site of 20 acres at the
northern end of the city, employs a faculty of from 35
to 40 professors and instructors, teaches a student body
of approximately 275, excluding the nurses in the train-

86 THE GREAT RIVER

ing school, and possesses a most completely equipped
group of laboratories and a very modern hospital of
150 beds.

In 1921, Yale in China was empowered by the
Mother University to confer the same degrees as Yale
University gives. On June 18, 1921, ten students
received medical degrees and a larger number received
Bachelor's degrees in arts and sciences. That day
marked the culmination of the efforts and dreams of
the pioneers of the Mission and it was also the dawn of
new projects and schemes of larger growth. Seated
upon the speaker's platform were not only the faculty
of the College but the Chinese officials who represent
Hunan's share in the medical school.

The romantic tale of the growth of Hunan-Yale
begins with IVIr. Lawrence Thurston, who came to China
as the pathfinder and who died without so much as
seeing the present site of the College, and continues
with Dr. Brownell Gage and Mrs. Gage who began the
academic work which has been directed by Dr. Gage
to this day. Dr. E. H. Hume came to Changsha in
1905 and in 1906 a small piece of property was purchas-
ed in the city where the Collegiate school was actually
opened. Across from that site, Dr. Hume set up and
equipped his tiny dispensary — the beginning of the pre-
sent hospital and medical school.

The enormity of the task of Dr. Hume, working
singly against the odds of ignorance, superstition and
pride, can hardly be imagined. The superstition of
the people had to be overcome by slow, diplomatic,
patient work and the death of one patient might have
undone the work of years. The first death of a dis-

CHANGSHA 87

pensary patient occurred after a year of heart-breaking
work and just as results were beginning to appear and
plans were entertained for larger development. Think-
ing that the dispensary might be attacked by the dead
man's relatives and friends, Dr. Hume asked for the
protection of a Government guard. He then purchased
a coffin for the dead man. The latter act served as a
far better protection than the troops, for the gratitude
of the family on seeing the coffin far outweighed super-
stition and fear. Instead of being the end of the work,
this incident proved to be the beginning. For at the
end of the year, a hospital was opened, Miss N. D. Gage,
a Wellesley graduate, came out to nurse, the next year
a permanent campus was secured and from that day
to this the school has been in session, having
continued throughout the Revolution of 1911 when
every other school in the city was irregularly opened
if at all.

The Hunan Provincial Government aids in the
support of the College. In 1919, it gave approximately
one-third of the total expenditure of the school. Upon
the platform with other representative people of Chang-
sha on that memorable day in 1921 sat Miss Tseng
Kuo-fan who conducts a high school for girls in the
buildings which first housed Yale-in-China. She is a
graduate of London University and she stands for
the modern education of China. She also repre-
sents the ancient Chinese learning of which Changsha
was so proud, for she is the great granddaughter
of Marquis Tseng Kuo-fan, scholar and warrior-hero,
one of the two greatest Hunanese soldiers of the Taiping
days.

88 THE GREAT RIVER

Changsha is very proud of her history. One sees
pride in the countenances of the sturdy Hunanese who
are encountered in the city streets. Their heads
are erect, their figures stalwart, their attitudes
haughty.

In ancient history the name of Emperor Wu
emerges from an obscure background. He was " the
King of Changsha " in 202 B.C. His name was con-
nected with all the movements of the time. He was
conspicuous in the struggle for the Empu-e in the years
between 210 and 206 B.C. He was of the Wu dynasty,
which flourished for 45 years until a lack of heirs caused
its extinction.

During the 2,000 years from that time to the
middle of the 19th century, there slowly grew up in the
Hunanese that self-confident hauteur which distin-
guishes them to-day. There were distinguished scho-
lars to whom temples were erected, and these temples
still stand in Changsha. They are carved with
the autographs of great writers. There were also dis-
tinguished statesmen and that aptitude for statesman-
ship among them has continued, for, during the
1911 Revolution when the Mancliu officials fled,
Hunan was so well-governed by the gentry that the
Republican Governors have never been able to regain
absolute control.

During the Taiping Rebellion Changsha was be-
sieged for 80 days by the rebels. Marquis Tseng Kuo-
fan and his heutenant Tso Tsung-tiang were the great
heroes of the day. The city was first saved through an
accident. The gates were standing wide open when the
rebels approached, but they mistook a high gate-like

CHANGSHA 89

structure on the south-eastern angle of the city wall for
the real entrance. On arriving there, they were con-
fronted with the highest, most massive section of the
entire wall. And though they laid siege for 80 days and
actually twice succeeded in making a breach in the wall,
they were finally defeated and forced to retreat.

CHAPTER XVI

Shasi — AND Never a Law of God or
Man Runs North of " 53"

Up where the Yangtze bends back upon herself
and takes a V-shaped course, she builds a high river-
bed with the ever-shifting soil and often overflows into
the surrounding lowland. At the left-hand top of the
" V " lies the small, crowded city of Shasi, a poor, sad-
looking jumble of wayside shacks, interspersed with
isolated examples of foreign architecture. Most of the
city lies twenty feet below the level of the river. At
the back of it is marshy, low-lying countrj^ Shasi
seems to be slipped in at the bend as though great dis-
tances had demanded another roadside tavern and that
were its only excuse for being. Flooded in the summer
cold and low and damp in the winter, drab, unroman-
tic, uneastern.

In the days before there were any treaty ports
west of Hankow, or any steamers running on the
Middle Yangtze, the importance of Shasi as a shipping
port was far greater than to-day. For in those days
the big Szechuan junks brought the wealth of West
China all the way down to Shasi and there transhipped
their cargo to Hupeh junks for Hankow. These
Hupeh junks ran between Hankow and Shasi, some-
times by the short route via the canals and the Han
River, and sometimes by the longer route following
the curves and deviations of the Yangtze.

But the Shasi merchants lost this rich Chungking
trade when steamers came to run between Hankow and

LAWLESS SHASI 91

Ichang, where cargo could be conveniently transhipped
between junk and steamer, thus eliminating the 90
miles of risk and delay and the extra taxation which
the Szechuan junks might have to face between Ichang
and Shasi.

The district round Shasi is much richer than that
near Ichang, and the former port is far more advantage-
ously situated as a distributing point for Western
Hupeh. But this local trade is not to be compared
with the vast volume of business coming to Ichang in
consequence of its strategic commercial position as
gateway to the great West and junction between the
Middle and Upper Yangtze. Therefore, Shasi has
sadly suffered and is now, in most years, despite the
cotton trade, the least important commercially of the
up-river treaty ports of the Yangtze.

Behind Shasi — an hour by chair — is the old Imperial
city of Kingchow. In the old days it was a Manchu
garrison city. Now it is an almost deserted ruin —
without the splendour of a ruin. Here and there one
sees the old Manchu type, but there is no story in his
face but decadence. One realizes then that the Chinese
who do survive the bad living conditions of their youth
may be better specimens of manhood than the remain-
ing Manchus who were carefully tended and protected
in their infancy ; and that the Chinese process of
absorption of these " horse-riding, arrow-shooting, bird-
raising " peoples is only a matter of time.

In ancient times, Kingchow was the centre of one
of the Three Kingdoms, and it was held by the hero
Kuan Yu, who is the most romantic figure of one of the
most romantic epochs in Chinese history. He was a

\/

92 THE GREAT RIVER

man of great, almost abnormal, size and strength.
What qualities of valour and personality he did not
possess have been accredited to him through the
drama and the novel. Almost every night throughout
the country the story of Kuan Yu and the other mem-
bers of a triple brotherhood is presented on the stage
of the Chinese theatre.

A thousand years after his death (at the hands of
Sun Chuan, who ruled the central Yangtze Kingdom),
Kuan Yu was elevated to the status of " God of War."
In Ichang, the temple to this god, over the south-
eastern gate, is the best cared for in the city, because
of the constant offerings made to him by the soldiers
who follow his warlike, if not his honourable,
example.

The history of Shasi records many disastrous
floods. Records of the days of the Emperor Ch'ien
Lung tell of a great flood in 1788, when the prefecture
of Kingchow was inundated as a result of a break in
the embankment of the Yangtze. Many Uves were
lost and much property destroyed. It was such a
great calamity that stories of it are still current among
the people. Later histories of Shasi floods are
monotonous in their similarity and regularity. But the
danger of a great disaster, surpassing all previous ones,
seems imminent.

A dyke, 180 miles long, runs from Shasi nearly to
Hankow. This dyke protects country which is lower
than the Yangtze by as much as 20 feet at Shasi and
which slopes steadily downward toward Hankow.
Foolishly enough, the land which was used to build
this dyke was taken from inland rather than from the

G

p^

-^^'^

Submerged by the Ichang Floods

Opium Burnmg at Ichang

in line Page 92

LAWLESS SHASI 93

river bed, thus increasing the bad condition which
abeady existed. Twenty or thirty thousand dollars
is paid every month to a provincial official in taxes
for the repair and up-keep of the embankment. But,
until last year, little or no work of any kind had
been done.

In 1920, when the last flood of the season rushed
down from its mountain sources, a level of 32 feet 2
inches, the highest record in 20 years, was reached.
The farmers say that floods run in cycles and that the
highest levels are at the beginning of a 20-year period
and the lowest at the end. The 1920 rise was
phenomenal and unexpected. A great deal of
property was destroyed and large areas of land
above Hankow were completely flooded.

The flood of 1921 was expected, and, therefore,
in the spring of that year, certain repairs were made to
the dyke, including a widening and strengthening of it.
Even so, in some places, the embankment is only a
few feet in width and not sufficiently strong. The
repairs were made just in time, for 192rs flood was
the greatest in 25 years, a level of 33 feet 4 inches at
Shasi was reached and in many places the water
of the Great River was within a few inches of
the top, so that the wash of ships caused it to
lap over.

According to ancient tradition the city's in-
habitants got out at night and with much beating of
drums and firing of crackers tried to prevail upon the
river gpd to withdraw. But the rumour was ciurent
in Shasi that when they saw their offerings to be of no
avail, a faithless general sent ten men to quietly cut

94 THE GREAT RIVER

the dyke on the opposite bank, thus releasing the
strain on the Shasi side, but, at the same time, causing
the loss of Ufe of the inhabitants of some 300 villages,
besides the destruction of much property across
the river. At any rate, whether the story is true
or not, the following day saw a drop of six inches in
the water level and the river god was appeased.

If the dyke at Shasi should break, and it is not
strong throughout, loss of life and property damage
would be incalculable ; an area of over a hundred
square miles of rice and wheat and cotton land in-
undated ; thousands of villages swept away ; millions
of lost lives ; and a new channel for the Yangtze
straight down to the Han river — all because a legi-
timate revenue is not accounted for.

During the last days of July, 1921, the traveller
down river past Shasi sees a city greyer than even be-
fore. The river has lowered a bit and left its mark in
silt upon the buildings and the walls. Coolies are still
wading and splashing along the Bund. Weedy grains,
drooping under the weight of the heavy gift of the
floods, fill a neglected spot between nondescript build-
ings. They are flanked by a single spot of colour
— a row of tiger lilies lifting their heads above flood
level — playing a losing game for beauty. The Cus-
toms compound is far under water — the Commissioner
had hoped to escape that calamity by the building of a
higher, stronger wall. The surrounding country is like
a huge lake. Away to the southward and eastward, as
far as one can see, is a vast expanse of water cut now
and then by the green spots which mark the tops of
trees or high embankment which has not yet been

LAWLESS SHASI 96

washed away. The old channels which were canals
and streams running southward to Tungting lake have
lost their identity and become a part of the great
inundation.

Shasi is the borderland of law and order. Beyond
it, to the westward, no rules or predictions hold good
and every situation must be met as it arises with native
wit and the weapons of the moment.

The illegal traffic in opium presents the clearest,
most flagrant case of lawlessness. One day in early
spring, the captain of an up-river steamer saw the
strange sight of an old, badly-weathered launch
bearing down swiftly upon him. It was broadside
to the current and very evidently out of control. The
wretched launch crashed on his bow, ruining its deck
house, then was shaken off and floated away.

The captain, thinking he could render some as-
sistance, moved toward her. But instead of seeing,
as he had expected, distressed Chinese eager for aid,
there appeared upon the deck sleepy-eyed, dazed
figures — still able to curse and shake their fists at the
foreigner. The story was, of course, the old opium
tale. The launch was being operated by Chinese
generals. Huge quantities of opium were on board,
being smuggled down river under the protection of
the flag of the Board of War !

With such effective means of evading the law
against the traffic in opium, it is easy to see that
the city which least concerns itself with the law in
combating that influence is most Ukely to be successful.
Shasi is an example of such a city. One wonders why
Shasi has escaped looting when the ports on either

96 THE GREAT RIVER

side of her have suffered from pillage. It is not a
wholly poverty-stricken city, for the country about is
rich in cotton and every Uttle home has its loom and
spindle. Agents for foreign companies are there
distributing their goods to western Hupeh.

The solution is that an opium agreement has been
made at Shasi. The merchants pay the soldiers a cer-
tain sum of money. The soldiers turn their backs upon
the traffic in opium. The price of peace is $10,000 a
month. As a result, pubhc opium smoking is allowed
throughout the Chinese city and gambUng rights are
sold. From these two trades a monthly revenue is
received by the merchants which amply repays them
for the $10,000 per month with which they placate the
soldiers and keep the httle city at peace.

CHAPTER XVII.

ICHANG — THE GATEWAY TO THE WeST.

While the Gorges are the real boundary between
the known and the unknown in West China, Ichang is
like a breath of anticipation. For as one leaves the
monotonous plains that characterize the country be-
tween Hankow and Shasi, the first sight of a new
strange country challenges the imagination of the
traveller. Even the breezes from the shore bear the
fragrance of pines and mark the limits of the hot,
steamy, plains of the lower river. This is grazing
country, roUing and green and spotted with white
kids and goats. Buffaloes gradually disappear. Ponies
make their first appearance in days of travel. They
are tiny, sure-footed creatures, ridden by the Chinese
in the manner of a people long accustomed to sit-
ting a horse. Colts run at top-speed in the joy of
youth and spring-time. Even pack burros — not like
the long caravans of Yunnan and the Tibetan border
country, but small trains — carry goods from the river to
villages inland and above flood level. Caves appear in
rocks and tell of age and ancient ways of living. And
very soon one sees the human beasts of burden, trackers
whose steadily increasing numbers indicate the grow-
ing strength of the current against which they work.

Our ship was already labouring against that tide.
The day darkened and the shore faded from view.
Every hour made progress more difficult and delayed
our arrival in Ichang. The sky, which had been

98 THE GREAT RIVER

slightly clouded, gathered, in the rising wind, a store
of rain and suddenly released it in sheets. The
captain talked of anchoring. The quartermaster in
the chains swung the lead and called out in the sailor's
exclusive tongue the depth of the racing water. To us,
standing behind him, he translated into unnautical
EngHsh what was supposedly EngUsh before. " Half-
five" ; " by the mark, six " ; " six and a half " ; " no
bottom." At his side stood his assistant to haul
in the lead as it drifted astern, so that China's mys-
terious system of the " one- job man " might not be
violated. Out it swung again to the swish of the
quartermaster's oilskin. " Deep-hole "; " quarter-
seven "; "no bottom."

But the captain did not anchor. He walked the
bridge all night. And we, in our cabins, not know-
ing the dangers of navigating the changing Yangtze
on a moonless night, onl}^ knew that the captain on
the bridge was responsible for our safety.

We slept to the sound of falling rain but, in the
morning, the first rays of hght dispelled the storm and
we awoke to a cloudless day. We were going through
Tiger's Tooth Gorge, a one-sided gorge, ^vith tree-
adorned hills dominated by a background of grotesque
crags. Diagonally from here, in a long sweep across
to the pagoda, which stands out Hke a lone Hghthouse,
then, moving very slowly against the still rising cur-
rent, Ichang came into view — an indistinct haze
of buildings. The ranges over the gorges are a back-
ground for the picture which is framed by P\Tamid Hill
on the left and the templed hills on the right to the
back of the city.

THE GATEWAY TO THE WEST 99

Our ship crawled along for more than half-an-hour
to reach the shoal in front of Ichang city, past the oil
companies' installations ; past the open spaces of
railroad property on which the foreign residents of
Ichang plan to build warehouses and landing facilities
to be ready for the great railroad when it finally comes,
and in the meantime use it for golf and baseball
games and for opium pyres where hundreds of thou-
sands of dollars go up in smoke ; past Chinese and
foreign houses and hongs mixed indiscriminately.
Then we reached the harbour — crowded, incessantly
busy, a perfect maelstrom of sampans, junks, lighters
with cargo, steamers and gunboats. It was three
weeks after the looting of Ichang in June, 1921, and
the gunboats which had hurried to the spot were still
crowding the harbour. H.M.S. Bee and Gnat, the
U.S.S. Wilmington and Elcano and a Japanese
gunboat, stood guard over unfortunate Ichang. Just
as we were distinguishing them from the surrounding
steamers, the U.S.S. Polos came tobogganing down
stream from the mouth of Ichang Gorge. The tide had
been rising and, near Kweifu, the gunboat had been
forced to turn back and was bringing the American
Admiral back to his flagship. Six gunboats and two
Admirals at little Ichang ! The salutes fired by
the U.S.S. Wilmington and returned by the British
Admiral's flagship shook the city and the river like
an earthquake. The Palos glided in and skilfully
moored in the narrow limits of the harbour as though
safely escaping the pursuit of the great river dragon.

The harbour is chosen, strangely enough, because
of its shallow water rather than deep. A sandy shoal

100 THE GREAT RIVER

affords fairly secure anchorage for up- and down-
river steamers.

The character of the harbour is that of Ichang.
The eternal business of shipping is the life of the port.
The dangerous, swirling current, in which the sampans
manoeuvre skilfully and frequently barely escape
upsetting, is no more dangerous than this border land
where, in critical times, law and order are unknown.
Customs' men inspect every ship for the opium which
is the under-current of everything in West China. No
tale of looting, of poverty, of wealth, or of big transac-
tions is quite all told without the sidelight of this
illicit trade. For it colours everything.

Lighters are heavily laden with coal which comes
in such huge quantities to supply the mighty engines
of the up-river steamers. There is the business of
transporting cargo from Hankow-Ichang steamers to
Ichang-Chungking steamers. Copper, in shining ingots
shaped like flat-irons, is brought out in huge quantities
from America to be turned into coin at the mints of
Chungking and Chengtu at a big official profit. Some
of it is smuggled down river again for use in western
Hupeh. This is a cargo, too, which is desirable as
ballast and captains of up-river steamers, particularly
of the older and smaller steamers, are glad to carry
a safe amount and so gain the increased stability which
the heavy copper gives.

Cotton yarn and packed cotton and piece goods so
desired in " the Beyond " form a very heavy propor-
tion of the upward trade and these constitute one of the
two most lucrative lines of business, the other being
opium. In 1920 transportation charges were so heavy

THE GATEWAY TO THE WEST 101

that cotton in some parts of Szechuan was almost as
expensive as silk. In the winter great quantities go
up by junk, but in the open season steamers are laden
with it. All the yarn that could be carried has not
sufficed to meet the great demand of Szechuan. Cotton
is also a convenient cargo to carry since, packed as it
is in uniform bales of equal weight, it can be more
easily and more closely stowed away and its weight
estimated as adding to or lessening the vessel's draught
inch for inch. This is a point very important where
equihbrium plays so large a part in navigation.

Kerosene oil is carried in great quantities by the
ships which fly the blue and red flags of " Socony " and
" Asiatic," carrying the gospel of light into the remotest
of remote interiors. And the remainder of the upward
cargo includes such things as iron and steel machine
parts ; pig lead and galvanized iron ; foreign articles
such as bags and mats, hats and caps, cigarettes, dyes,
matches and sewing machines, lamps and clocks and
foreign medicines ; paper and coal and cotton um-
brellas and cereals and books and munitions and print-
ing presses.

According to the time of the year the river flowing
by Ichang is either wide and mighty, swiftly-moving
and destructive, or narrow and unnavigable for large
steamers. At low level the foreshore is lined with
villages.

The sand shoal is not adequate to the in-
creasing amount of shipping. Ichang' s character as
a terminal port distinguishes it from lower river ones
where ships lie merely for a few hours. Nowadays,
at Ichang, when there are as many as 16 steamers at

102 THE GREAT RIVER

one time in this small space and with the current strong
and the river high, there is constant danger of steamers
dragging anchor and slipping down upon one another.
The sampans manoeuvre between them and Hghters
with cargo are tied by ropes to the shore, thus increasing
the dangers of sampan navigation as the ropes hang
just below the surface of the water.

As our ship came into her berth, there seemed
hardly space for a mooring among the ships flying
British, American, Japanese and French flags. A
dozen steamers of special type are now plying between
Ichang and Chungking, many more than run in the
opposite direction, to Hankow, with better passenger
accommodation, far better engines, and higher salaried
ships' companies than the latter. It is well that the
ships on this dangerous run should be well equipped.
When onl}^ a few months of the 1921 season had passed
by, over half the ships had been forced to undergo
serious repairs and one ship, the str. 3Ieishun, was
beneath the river. At the same time, defective equip-
ment had placed certain steamers in extreme danger
and proved more forcibly than ever that the Customs'
River Inspector holds a most responsible post. More-
over, there are no dock or repair facihties in Ichang
and every ship must go to Hankow or Shanghai
for repairs, thus involving an enormous loss of time.

There was much talk of transportation charges
in Ichang last year. The tendency of Chinese com-
panies has lately been to underbid freight rates and
passenger rates. In 1920 the godowns of Ichang were
congested with cargo and the movement of it west-
ward was checked, but 1921 opened with more steamers

THE GATEWAY TO THE WEST 103

running and the cargo accumulation of months was
eliminated in weeks. The Japanese have no ships
plying above Ichang, thus far. From Hankow three
Japanese steamers are running to Ichang but about
as much cargo arrives on these three as is brought by
any two of the British merchant ships. Because of
large discounts to Chinese merchants, the Japanese
secure a fair amount of local cargo trade at Ichang
and they also do a good amount of business direct
with their homeland.

Ichang is, however, distinctly a shipping port.
It has no time for student movements or for partisan
agitation. Moreover, while other parts of China may
justly consider themselves in danger from Japanese
militarism, Ichang is face to face with a more imminent
danger from Chinese militarism which completely ob-
scures the more distant one.

On the p5T'amid-Hke hill across the river from
Ichang, the Japanese years ago placed three Chinese
characters advertising a Japanese medicine. The
characters read " CKing kuai wan " and they mean
"the invigorating pill," but when spoken they sound the
same as the characters which mean " Manchu dynasty
quickly finish." This caused great consternation on
the one hand among the coolies who only knew the
spoken language and agitation on the other among the
Chinese officials who reahzed the effect these words
might have. Measures were started to try to get these
characters removed but the Japanese stood on their
rights and they are there to-day as they were years
before the downfall of the Manchu dynasty.

104 THE GREAT RIVER

And this same pyramid is the one of which Major
Drury writes in his fascinating " Passing of the Flag-,
ship." He describes how a pillage of Ichang was
averted by the ingenuity of a marine officer who, with
a gunboat's searchlight, produced a vision of a flying
dragon who touched the tip of Pyramid Hill, marked a
bright path across the sky, and rested on Temple Hill
beyond !

But the superstition of more modern China is
lessening a bit. In the nights following Ichang' s June
1921 looting, the gunboat's searchlight was more
effective at searching out booty-carrying cooUes from
dark corners of the Bund than in striking terror into
the hearts of the evil-doers !

CHAPTER XVIII
IcHANG Ruins

On a bright moonlight night about three weeks
after the looting of Ichang, we drifted slowly through
the flooded ruins in a sampan. The Chinese boatmen
rested their boat hooks on the crumbling stone and
mortar to push us onward. A loosened stone now and
then splashed into the water releasing a puff of white
dust. A lone archway was outlined by a narrow
margin of uneven masonry. Water covered masses
of debris which had been carefully despoiled of every-
thing of any possible value before the floods came. A
turbulent backwash from the swift current of the
Yangtze sought to undermine the tottering structures.
We wondered that a scene of such destruction could be
so beautiful. The angles of uneven walls were soft-
ened and mellowed by the moon's yeUow light. Pieces
of ugly iron sheeting sticking through broken walls
appeared in ghostly shape.

The night of the June, 1921, looting of Ichang was
only half moonlight and starry. There was enough
light to aid the soldiers in finding their way around ;
not too much to make their coming known to the
unfortunate sufferers. The people who watched on
that night describe the sight of bands of soldiers
running through the streets ; of the hghts of fires here
and there and finally a great conflagration of fires ;
of rifle shots that have left holes over fireplaces and
under windows of foreign dweUings.

106 THE GREAT RIVER

From the sampan we leaned out and touched the
crumbling walls. A sign loosened and twisted by the
fire was still readable. In the bright moonUght, we
made out " Anlee Shipping Company." On the other
side of the gate in Chinese characters was the old sign
of the American West China Shipping Company which
had not been taken down after that company lost
its only steamer on the up-river run, in 1921, the
str. Meishun. These two companies occupied the
same godown and it was there that, after the Novem-
ber looting, piles of copper ingots were found that
somehow had escaped discovery by the bandits.

Behind these godowns are the ruins of the Bank
of China — a big, waste place. When Ichang was
pillaged by bandit-soldiery during the previous Nov-
ember, the manager of the bank very cleverly evaded
the looters by cutting off the corners of the bank-
notes. Near to this ruin is the office of the China
Merchants' Steam Navigation Company. This office
was looted but not as wantonly destroyed as the others.

The single archway which stands alone and
through which our sampan glided, is the erstwhile
gateway of a yamen. It was here that heads stuck
on the ends of poles were displayed during the days
following the looting. The long building behind the
first courtyard of the yamen was entirely destroyed.
These had been the barracks of the departing soldiers.

Near at hand the Standard Oil Companj^'s city
shop once stood. The local agent speaks of visiting
the site on the morning after the June looting to find
only parts of the walls standing. In the November
outrage, the oil looted from this shop was used to

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ICHANG RUINS 107

start fires throughout the city. In June the shop was
burned down as it stood, thereby doing less damage to
the city, perhaps, than before. The gold and silver
shops are always the goal of wealth-seeking bandits.
Those in Ichang, built to imitate the shops on Nanking
Road, Shanghai, were completely destroyed.

But poor shops were looted as well as wealthy
ones. The rice shops were not, as a general rule,
molested, thus proving that the looters were not
actuated by hunger. One poor man's shop was entered
three times in one night. The first time everything
he possessed of value was taken ; the second time his
clothes were stolen ; the third time his bedding was
the object of their desires. The shopman complained
to a soldier of the third band that a fourth raid would
mean the loss of his fife since he had nothing more to
hand over. So the soldier sympathetically invited him
to the barracks where he remained until morning.
When the soldiers came back after their night's work
they greeted him, expressed gratitude at his good
health, and bade him farewell.

Nearby is the ruin of a Greek tobacconist's shop,
whence the Greek manager escaped, as he said, " by
a piece of string," meaning a rope. All along the Bund
stretch the remains of these looted and burned shops.
Huge warehouses which were packed with thousands
of dollars' worth of raw cotton, cotton cloth and cotton
yarn are nothing but crumbhng walls enclosing piles
of the twisted iron hoops that were around the bales.

A deserted waste place is the scene of shops
where on the morning after the owners sat on piles
of dSris, smoking borrowed pipes and joking with the

108 THE GREAT RIVER

soldiers as they passed along with their swag in
search of new fields to conquer. Farther along are
the offices of the Robert Dollar Company, looted in
November and again in June. A safe which resisted
opening was thrown from a second-storey window
and, when broken by its impact with the ground,
was robbed.

Across from the Standard Oil hong, stands the
property of the French fathers which has been rented
to various companies and individuals. The bandits
fell upon this place immediately. It so happens that
large quantities of opium were found on these premises
some time before and the fact cast an illuminating
sidehght on the causes of the looting. Providentially
the Customs' men had burned several thousand dollars'
worth of opium just the day before the fateful third of
June. Otherwise there might have been yet more
difficulty in keeping the rioters out of the Customs'
compound.

Not all the damage was done to buildings along
the Bund. As one walks through the streets toward
the foreign compounds, one frequently passes signi-
ficant reminders. There is a building on whose scarred
masonry are the indentations of many bullets. Broken
flower pots on casement windows have never been
removed. Farther along are the looted remains of other
foreign houses of business. The Chamber of Commerce
building with only the waU standing is to be seen in
its large compound.

The November, 1920, looting caused an estimated
loss of Tls. 30,000,000. There was not so much damage
to property in the riot of the following June but there

ICHANG RUINS 109

was more wanton disregard for life. Over 100 Chinese
were killed and about 200 wounded, over half of
whom were women and children.

One moonlight night in Ichang, we watched from
the wall of a compound two Chinese bandits in uniform
robbing a small puntza or corner-stand of tobacco and
small money. It was all very quiet and orderly.
Shop-keepers from nearby stood looking on with
seemingly the most casual interest. The two made
away with their small winnings. Afterwards we
walked through the streets and found them to be
unusually quiet. The silence was foreboding. It so
happened that there was no more looting in Ichang
that night. But it was easy to visualize how a raid
begins — with systematic robberies throughout the city;
the offering of resistance leading to shots and bloodshed;
fires starting up all over the city ; and through it aU
the increasing boldness of the soldiers and their
decreasing regard for human hfe.

On each of those eventful nights, foreigners
patroUed the town going from one compound to another
looking after the welfare of the women of the port.
A few of them have been most highly commended for
their bravery on the night of the third of June. They
went among the soldiers all night, many of whom
were decidedly hostile. The foreigner was always on
the aggressive. Seeing a soldier band in the offing,
he would run toward them, walk along with them, and
ask them what they were about. They even demanded
and succeeded in getting the looters' assistance in
scaHng the waUs of compounds where they wished to
make sure of the safety of ladies within.

110 THE GREAT HIVER

A certain family — a man and his wife — were
living in a fiat at the top of a high building which
seemed to have a particular attraction for the looters.
Again and again bands broke in and raided this building.
Before reaching the flat in which the people were Uving,
the soldiers fired bullets through the floor. As the
looters broke in, the husband tried to stop them but they
fired at point-blank range. He thought it wise to fall
as if dead and his poor wife thought he really was.
She rushed up from bed and fell on his body. A faithful
cooHe who tried to help her was bayonetted before
her eyes. Everything which she and her husband
possessed was taken by successive parties of raiders
who carried away all the clothing with ever3'i:hing else.
After three bands of looters had ransacked the flat,
the wife climbed out of the window on to a near-by
roof to hide from the fourth crowd of fiends. She was
saved from further molestation by the arrival of the
British Consul who came unarmed to their assistance
and who took both herself and her husband to the
safety of his residence where they remained for days.

As the night went on, the fires grew brighter and
more threatening. The bandits seemed to increase in
number as they commandeered coohe men and women
to carry their loot. Bullets and bayonets were used
recklessly that terrorism might cause hidden treasures
to be revealed. Little babies were pierced by bayonets
before the eyes of their parents and women were
butchered for the sake of their ear-rings and ornaments.
Of the Chinese men who were murdered many were
simply trying to defend their children and women-
folk.

ICHANG RUINS 111

Just as in other emergencies, the ladies of the
Missions faced danger most bravely. Each sought
emergency duties and none appealed for protection.
Friends who came to offer help found them self-
reliant, unafraid and anxious to be of service to others.
Among them were Scottish girls with war-work ex-
perience who knelt down in exposed places to bandage
and try to alleviate the pain of dangerously wounded
cooUes.

About six o'clock the looting ceased. That day
the lawless horde gathered their booty together, loaded
it upon the str. Kweilee, until the boat listed with
the weight of it, and made away. Curious, the type
of character developed by such vagabonds. One of
these " princes of the land " was travelling down river
on a foreign steamer some time later. A missionary
fell into conversation with him. " Yes," said the ex-
soldier in Chinese, " I got $800 out of the last looting.
Half of it was in heavy silver so I got money orders for
it at the post office and sent it to my family. The
remainder was in currency and easy to carry in my
money-belt. I've been five years in the army now
and this is the first time I've fallen into such good
luck." He had used the very post-office that was
looted to transmit the stolen money ! Here was an
example of the t3^e of thief who considers that he
turns a good business deal if a looting comes off well and
who may, if especially successful, aspire to become
Tuchun of a province.

CHAPTER XIX

Through the Gorges

It is three in the morning. SearchUghts Ught the
river and sweep the bank. Coolies caU out in loud,
impatient voices. The ship's crew haul up anchor and
the engines begin their pulsing at one and the same
time so as not to slip downstream with the current.
A terrifying proceeding, indeed. We, the passengers,
creep about the unhghted deck watching the light as
it searches out the turmoil of sampans and sets them
in clear relief, then leaves weird shadows behind it as
it moves on again. We knew we would not have got
under way if the water mark had been higher than it
was the day before, so we presume now that all is
weU as we finally draw away from our mooring and
steam slowly upstream. The ship vibrates as though
it were all a part of the mighty engine which must
generate a power equal to overcoming the tide of the
Yangtze at her best.

In a few minutes we enter the gates of the Ichang
Gorge. It is hke a great, gloomy cave. The sides
of the hills shut in the only sound — the constant pulse,
pulse of the engine, the creaking of a deck pole, the
everlasting wash of the water. Sixteen miles we go
through Yellow Cat and Lampshine Gorge and into
zig-zag reaches. The narrow channel winds and winds.
We look back as the gateway closes behind us. The
sun's first red streaks appear across the sky. And
now we come to meet the rising sun around the next

THROUGH THE GORGES 113

corner. It is like waking from a dream of caves and
underground passages into a world of colour and cool
shadow and bright sunlight.

It is so that one starts on the four-day journey
from Ichang to Chungking stepping from a land which
is a bit familiar to China visitors into a world new and
beautiful, of outlandish customs and strange, romantic
sights.

A journey of 350 miles and an uphill ascent in
that distance of approximately 500 feet, five times the
ascent from Shanghai to Ichang in about a third of
the distance ; a round- trip journey which takes as
long as to go from New York to Liverpool by boat ; a
journey which requires a small ship to expend so
much coal that it costs equally as much to ship a ton
of freight from Ichang to Chungking as to transport
it around the world. What precious cargoes these
boats must carry !

The ship we were on kept near the banks to avoid
the strength of the current which swept down like
Niagara turned loose. We were constantly having to
change banks to find the deepest water and, as we
veered across, the stern of the ship would swing after
us as the current caught her broadside. The whole
surface of the water was a swirling mass of whirlpools
sucking the froth they created into their centres. A
coffee-coloured torrent on its destructive way.

Already it was like another land. Straw huts,
tucked away under a ledge of rock, with no visible
escape above from the sureh^ rising water. Junk men
carefully balancing their boats as they rocked and
shifted water in the wake of our ship. Piles of rocks

114 THE GREAT RIVER

in midstream with the rushing cmrent steadily work-
ing to re-sculpture them. A naked fisherman standing
on a bit of rock and seining for his daily bread. Tall
bare rocks Uke citadels that caught the glints and rays
of the sun. And sometimes, as the river broadened
in places, a little hamlet on a wooded bank, smoke
rising above the trees, the family watching our
steamer pass. We seemed to be going very rapidly
as we watched the water over the side of the ship, but
sometimes it was long before we would pass and leave
out of sight a particular sampan upturned on a mossy
bank or a particular spot of red among the blue gowned
onlookers in their hillside homes.

On the morning of the first day, we entered Ox-
Liver and Horse's Lungs Gorge, so-named, they say,
from the formation of the rock. Strange and weird
as the name and as impossible of description is the
gorge. Every now and again we pass a miniature
village built on a sloping bank where streets were
steep and the houses were built high from the banks on
slender poles so that they looked like bird cages. We
were told that every winter houses were built down to
the very water's edge and that every summer they were
regularly washed away. Evolution has had no effect
on these builders.

Between Ox-Liver and Mitan Gorge, we passed a
knoll near the village of Hsin-t'an. On the top is
Captain Plant's bungalow, where he and Mrs. Plant
hved for many years and where passengers on passing
ships would be waved to and would wave in return to
the people who always came out on the verandah to
see them pass by. Now the bungalow is to become a

!■.■ / ,.,, /'././, / //

The Late Captain S. Cornell Plant

THROUGH THE GORGES 115

rest-house, it has been suggested, for the trackers
whose sufferings the " Grand Old Man of the Upper
Yangtze " did so much to alleviate. Captain Plant
chose this location in which to live in order to study
the Hsin-t'an rapids in the winter time. Thirty per
cent, of the junks attempting to cross these rapids in
the winter season are lost. The whole village has been
built from the wreckage of junks. And in the hills
at the back there are fossils for ardent geologists and
wild goat shooting for the sportsman.

The Mitan Gorge is the shortest of all, only two
and a half miles. Above it lies old Kueifu city, at the
foot of one of the most fearsome stretches of water for
winter sailing craft. In fact, it is one of the places
that makes steamer navigation during the winter
months impossible. It was at Buffalo Mouth rapid,
the second of the three big rapids in that stretch, that
the first ship of the season was sacrificed to the river
god.

The American ship Meishun on April 29, 1921, was
having a hard time making her way against the big
rise of water. She had had difficulty getting across
the other rapids and it was about four o'clock in the
afternoon when the attempt was made to navigate
Buffalo Mouth. Apparently the freshet met them
there. A swirl hfted the boat up and deposited it
amidships on a rock, making a hole in the engine room
about the size of a man's head. Then another swirl
came, Hfted her off the rock, and she made for shore.
Her nose was poked up on the bank and all the pas-
sengers were safely rescued. The only fife that was
nearly lost was that of a big fat Chinese who jumped

116 THE GREAT RIVER

into the river to save his worldly possessions. The
officer who saw him threw a Hfe buoy and aimed so ac-
curately that he thought for a moment he had drowned,
in trying to save, him. But the next moment up
came the head, ringed by the life-buoy.

There were many funny incidents that contributed
themselves to overcoming the tragedy of the wreck.
There was the captain who gathered his valuables
from the safe and threw the combination again leav-
ing his gold watch inside, and his subsequent despair,
and the appearance of it at the hands of his boy,
who nonchalantly answered to astonished remarks at
his having got the watch from the locked safe, " Oh,
suppose watchee you one time, any man can do."
A member of a rescue party who scorned the im-
provised dwellings made hastily on the rocks, sent
his boy in search of accommodation, but didn't take
advantage of it after it was secured because as he said

" the d hovel had seven pigs in it already and he

wasn't going to make the eighth." If the water is
not too high, travellers are able to see the slanting
top of a yellow mast head thrusting itself up above
the surface.

Above the rapids is the village of Patung whence
came the soldiers who looted Ichang in 1921. Across
the river, a waterfall comes down by leaps into a glen-
like canyon below, beautiful and refreshing to the
passengers whose steamers stop there, giving them
time to go and stand under its splashing coolness.
From there it is only five miles to the entrance to
Wushan or Witches' Gorge, the longest of all — 25
miles.

THROUGH THE GORGES 117

It is well-named with its enormously high cliffs,
dark and gloomy, very sheer. In some places the
banks are green, terraced and intensively cultivated
part way up, in other places, the trees seem to be
growing out of bare rock. Sometimes, we would see
a pathway for trackers cut deep into the face of a sheer
cHff so narrow that it would seem a tracker could
never stand erect in it. From the stern of the boat, we
watched as the perspective changed and farthermost
cliffs seemed to rise above the nearer ones. We
gazed up at caves in the sides of rocks and saw the
tiny figures of people looking down at us. Many of
these caves were banked up with walls of stone to
prevent shding. Many were abandoned. There was
always the fascinating business of watching junks
skilfully manipulated by oarsmen and trackers.

Halfway through the gorge comes one of the sur-
prising and enchanting breaks in the rocks which
marks the opening of a diverging canyon and gives
one a glimpse at the mysteries beyond. Here we
cross the boundary line between Hupeh and misty
Szechuan.

It is in the upper part of Wushan gorge that the
greatest rise and fall of water takes place. There
has been a difference of 200 feet between high and low
water level. And it does not rise slowly. As we were
going through the water level was 149 feet. Five days
before it had been 67 feet. Moreover, it had risen
45 feet in 24 hours. Ships are anchored very carefully
at night and plenty of wire stay ropes are strung out
along the bank to hold the ship in place. Yet, when
a big freshet comes, these safeguards are often all

118 THE GREAT RIVER

swept away and the captain must be ready to get up
steam immediately or the ship will be lost.

Every mile of the channel from Ichang to Chung-
king is treacherous and dangerous. A wrong twist
of the wheel, a moment's relaxation from watching,
may mean destruction. The captains of the boats
that undertake this run are on the bridge 17 hours a
day. In Chungking, the ship only remains long enough
to unload and reload and then is away again on the
return trip of a day and a half and at Ichang there is a
stop of two days at the most in normal conditions
before the up-river trip again. Two days rest after
five of constant strain and sleeplessness !

At the close of the day in the refreshing coolness
(for it is hot during July in the gorges) we were still
coming through a narrow channel between high cliffs.
One was a great slab of veined stone with a formation
like a huge chapel floor at the bottom ; again, we
could see steps running up and over a precipitous rock,
the route over which an Emperor is said to have es-
caped from his pursuers ; we could see also, holes in
the cliff where centuries before short bamboos had
been inserted to form a cUff ladder, by the cunning
of a general whose army scaled these heights to escape
from the gorge in which they were trapped. Farther
on there is a cave where several military officials
went into hiding with their wealth. They were afraid
of losing their heads, it is said, and somehow they
were able to get into a seemingly inaccessible cave on
the mountain side. Welcome visitors were drawn up
by means of a rope let down from above. A woman
in the mission at Kueichowfu called at their queer

THROUGH THE GORGES 119

home because one of the officials was a Christian. She
was hauled up by the rope and it was drawn up after
her until the call was ended !

That night we moored by the bank near the town
of Wushan, where a tree was uprooted by the guy
ropes and where it took a long time to arrange things
satisfactorily. It was a beautiful night, starlit and
cool, with mysterious, unknown hills at hand.

Early in the morning we went through a rapid
which required " full steam ahead." The water piled
up over the bow of the ship like beaten caramel. And
when we arrived in calmer water above, the momentum
of former power carried us very dangerously near
the huge rock ahead and to the right of our
channel.

Rapids are made in two ways. Either by shoals of
rock which form dams and over the ends of which the
water rushes with great force, or by the narrowed
channel between two cliffs. The former are dangerous
during low water. At high water, they do not exist.
Since most of the upper Yangtze rapids are formed by
landslides or by rocks protruding from the bed of the
river, the summer season loses much of its excitement.
But not all by any means. Fut'an rapid is caused
in the second manner and the torrent which rushes
between those walls of rock above Wanhsien, is terrify-
ing and awe-inspiring.

The last of the big gorges is Kueifu or Bellows
Gorge. This is the most tremendous of all.

The mountains are piled up on one another like
a great dumping ground. Big black dreary holes in
the rocks. Rocks like half-baked bricks dumped aside.

120 THE GREAT RIVER

Swirling water with black drift held in patches by the
opposing currents. It was depressing, gloomy, awe-in-
spiring. A Httle way, high above the water's edge,
thrust within a crevice, are the coffin-like boxes which
give the gorge its name. They are man-made boxes
and are about six feet across the face of the opening
as well as can be ascertained from a distance. Nobody
knows how they got there and no one has been able to
get up to them to see what they are made of. They
look like clay or iron. The Chinese say that the devil
put them there.

Kueifu Gorge marks the end of the soul-
thrilHng part of the journey to Chungking except
that on the way back, the traveller has it all over
again, in new aspects. He sees the apparently closed
rocks ahead into which the boat seems to be rushing
with great rapidity. But just at the point of danger,
the Yangtze reveals itself, sUpping around the corner
into a new scene and toward a new wall beyond. The
short Mitan Gorge proved itself more lovable on the
return journey. As we went sweeping into its straight
stretches, our ship speeding along with the current at
a rate of 22 knots an hour, the cool wind came to
meet us and swept the deck of all the lurking lazy
breezes of the upper reaches. It was a thrilling
voyage.

On the second day at noon we steamed down
majestically on Ichang, made a skilful turn, rested on
the current like a hovering bird, and dropped anchor
before the Yangtze had a chance to pick a quarrel
with us for not continuing our swift ride with her on
to the sea.

CHAPTER XX

KUEICHOWFU AND WaNHSIEN

The first large city above Ichang at which up-
river boats call is Kueichowfu. It is just above
Kueifu Gorge. The moment the traveller sees it he
knows that here is something, the like of which he
has never before dreamed of. A high crenelated wall
undulating with the ridges of the hills faces the water-
front. Behind it and close against it are seen the
upper parts of quaint buildings and temples — all yellow,
dull red and weather-beaten blue — coloured in all
the rich tints of an ancient artistic brush and the added
ones that age has given them. Before the wall, which
is approached from the water's edge by streets of
steps, are the tottering structures where the riverine
Chinese make their homes. Down the steps come
laden coolie labourers. Along the wall perch lazy
soldiers looking down on the one side to the quiet,
ancient city, on the other to the swarming, busy,
shipping population.

Here we bought chopsticks made of wood with
little carved lions on their tops, and beautiful combs in
sets of three that were cut and carved out of wood of
all shades of yellow and brown.

As we steamed slowly away we looked back and
saw a phantom city. The background of fancifully
shaped hills was misty with clouds. In the growing
distance, the clouds slipped forward, until they enfold-
ed Kueichowfu and quietly spirited her away before
our eyes.

122 THE GREAT RIVER

Above here, the river widens and flows between
green foothills. When the river runs low in the winter
time, men may be seen washing for native gold and
then, too, the salt wells which lie in the bed of the
river are uncovered and despoiled of their wealth, to
be covered again until the end of the summer season.

We passed many a contented-looking farmhouse sur-
rounded by terraced fields of corn and grains. Temples
become more frequent as the hills become more acces-
sible. Pilgrims wend their way along shadowy paths,
waving their ubiquitous fans. Bands of trackers look
like Red Indians as they bend their brown, muscled,
backs over a long tow rope. Here and there, where
the stream seems broad, our steamer ploughs against
the swiftest current, so that we, who watch with
eyes that do not see below the surface, wonder why
the pilot does not choose a less difficult path. But
we do not know that the bed of the river is composed
of shingle banks and ledges of rock and that we are
prevented from hugging one bank or the other by
projecting ledges which are submerged at high water
and mean destruction for the steamer which strikes
them.

We pass many a snug hamlet tucked back into a
still and shallow bay. We pass Siakan, the robber
city, and see huddled, misshapen huts such as pirates
choose for homes. We come to the Gorge of the Eight
Cliffs where the river runs between plateaux of sand-
stone and leaves a navigable channel of only 150 yards.

Then we come in sight of the 13-story pagoda of
Wanhsien and soon come upon the most picturesque
city between Ichang and Chungking, 177 miles from

KUEICHOWFU 123

the former. Wanhsien is built upon the steep sides of
a hill among many hills. Our steamer stops on the
opposite side of the river and we view the city from
afar. The hills behind rise at gradually increasing
heights. The farthest distant are snow-capped and
touched with the red rays of the setting sun. The
nearer hills are flat-topped and give a curious im-
pression of being cut from a picture-book. They are
shrouded in the faint mist which is ever-present in
Szechuan country. The nearer sides are flat and bare.
Into the bare sides are thrust half -buried temples that
look like painted dolls' houses and are so much a
part of the rock that they seem to have grown up
there. At the side of the city flows Little River,
emptying into the Yangtze. From our ship we see
the curious bridge of Wanhsien which arches over
Little River and supports a house on its very centre.

On one flat-topped hill we can make out the brown
snaky path of a wall. And we learn that away up
there, dwell certain wealthy Chinese who have sought
a safer home and who live among gardens and fields
which make them self-supporting, divinely indifferent
to flood and attack which harass the citizens below.

At the back of us on the opposite shore from
Wanhsien a winding path leads to a temple in a cave.
Water drips down from the rocky roof and refreshes
the patient idols, and moss grows about their feet and
about the fountain which is constantly replenished by
the cool waters of a spring. But very soon, a gondola-
like sampan comes from across the stream to take us
to Wanhsien. With the water level high and the
current swift, it is no easy task to cross. Our strong

124 THE GREAT RIVER

coolies pole far up-stream, hugging the right bank to
avoid the strong swift downward current. Far above
the city, they push suddenly into the stream and row
with all their strength. Every push of the oar is
accompanied by a heavy simultaneous stamp of feet
and loud gi'unts of exertion. They row straight
across the river, but the current bears us swiftly down-
ward, so that we are sweeping in a long diagonal line
toward Wanhsien. We arrive at the mouth of Little
River, many rods below the point to which our coolies
had laboriously poled. A little distance up Little
River there is a natural dam which prevents our going
further to the arched bridge. Under the waterfall
small boys disport themselves unhampered by, to
them, unknown standards of civilization. One of
our oarsmen had his few clothes off preparatory to a
cool swim before we were hardly stopped.

Back we went, the downward current of Little
River almost equalized by the backwash of the rising
Yangtze, to the steps of Wanhsien. Here we entered
a strange land. Up endless steps, round corner after
corner, every flight is another street, lined with restau-
rants and shops and beggars. Finally, at the end of a
street, we entered a temple. Here is the home of one
of the eight foreigners of the port.

The courtyard in the centre is bare and denuded
of its altar. On one side is the living room with books
and magazines, easy chairs, and a victrola. On the
walls hang the fascinating bamboo screens painted
with Chinese sketches which come from the country
at the back of Wanhsien and which are very difficult
to get. On the other side of the courtyard is the

OQ

WANHSIEN 125

dining room. And at the back of these rooms, both of
which are raised from the courtyard, more steps lead
to many rooms above, which finally end in a verandah
at the very top, but which is itself on a level with the
street and houses behind.

Eight foreigners hve in Wanhsien. They are all
bachelors. Wanhsien is both too dangerous and too
lonely for a woman. The bachelors Hve far apart
from one another but they come together now and
then for dinner and for holidays. Away back from
the city in the hills are bungalows to which they can
go on week-ends. But even so, it is too lonely, and
breaks in their solitude are too infrequent for human
beings well to endure. Wanhsien should have been
opened as a separate treaty port 18 years ago. It was
opened in 1920 and the terms of the treaty state that
it is to be opened to foreign trade on the same footing
as Shanghai and Hankow. But it has never been.
The Customs' service in Wanhsien is under that of
Chungking. British steamers are sometimes prevented
from coaling at the port except on the payment of
excessive taxes — an infringement of a specific clause
in the treaty.

At one time some hundred junks were held up
here by military authorities who demanded payment
of a tax unlawfully levied. The famous story of their
release — which is now called the Battle of Wanhsien — ■
was told to us as we sat at dinner in the temple home.
In the centre of the table was a tiny silver model of a
British gunboat, a repUca of the one which figures in
the story.

V

126 THE GREAT RIVER

One hundred junks loaded with cotton had been
despatched from Ichang with proper duty paid and
bearing the required papers. Upon their arrival in
Wanhsien, the junks were held by military authorities
for more taxation. The merchants refused to pay.
The taxes were unjust and exceedingly excessive. So
the vessels loaded with thousands of dollars' worth of
cotton and cotton goods remained in Wanhsien month
after month, the merchants at Chungking becoming
more and more impatient as the demands on them for
goods grew more insistent. A British gunboat was
about to steam up the Gorges. Her captain was in
in the Customs' Club at Ichang the night before her de-
parture. He was approached by a British merchant
who asked him to see what he could do about the
junks which were unlawfully held up at Wanhsien.
" Righto," said the captain and departed to his ship.

The gunboat anchored in Wanhsien a few days
later, and the captain sent word to the Chinese General
who was responsible for the trouble asking him to come
aboard the ship. The General came and was then told
that the city would be fired upon at two o'clock if the
junks were not released before that time. There the
conference ended. Then the captain sent word first, to
the civilians of the city, warning them that the city
would be under bombardment at the fateful hour of
two, and second, to the junks to be prepared to get
under way as the first shot was fired. Then he went
ashore to tiffin. That memorable tiffin took place
round the very table at which we were seated listening
to the tale. Not only was the British captain present
with his host, but, also, the local Chinese General.

WANHSIEN 127

Promptly at two o'clock the captain made his
excuses and left the tiffin table to bombard the city.
History does not record the General's feeUngs. He
may have thought to the last moment that all the
warnings were merely a matter of bluff. At two
o'clock a blank shell was fired. It was followed by
another blank. The second was followed by a third
blank. But the fourth, aimed at a projecting rock way
above the city, was true. By this time the junks
were under way. The General offered no resistance.
And so with only one shell fired, and with no casualties
recorded, ended the Battle of Wanhsien, for which the
captain of the gunboat was commended, in the words
of the naval department " for his quick wit and
decisive action."

Along Little River there is a large Japanese wood-
oil factory. In the hills back of Wanhsien grow the
trees which produce the pod from which wood-oil is
made. It is a very fine quality of oil, one which
wears forever and withstands heat and cold and scratch-
ing. A very good quality of silk is made in the hills
at the back of the city. From farther away come
the pretty transparent bamboo screens. But the hiUs
between, in the spring of the year, are dotted and
coloured with the poppy, the fruit of which is carried
out from the fields in all manner of ways and shipped
down river and sold among the people.

At midnight that night we recrossed the dark
river. It was swirhng and terrifying. The cooUes
strained at the oars to beat the current by a few inches.
Once we touched the edge of a whirlpool but, after a
breathless moment, when the boat swung and tipped

128 THE GREAT RIVER

to one side, we slipped past it and finally reached the
other side safely and thankfully.

Later in the night a brightness awakened us.
We went on deck. Huge red flames lit up the sky.
Their reflexion formed a blood-red path across the
water. Above the rush of the water, we could still
distinguish the sound of falling timbers and breaking
walls. Wanhsien was more beautiful then than ever
before as the flames brought out the grotesque shapes
of the hills behind in flashes of light which quickly
faded away only to appear again.

Later the rain came and the fire was extinguished,
and in the early morning there was no sign of the night's
blaze as we steamed slowly westward.

CHAPTER XXI
West-China Boxers in 1921

South of the Yangtze river, Hupeh on the Szechuan
border is mountainous, cut with many rivers and
fertile valleys. Here, during recent years, particularly,
the distress has been unbelievable. The Southern
armies have occupied the district most of the time for
the last three years and have forced the farmers to
grow opium. Thus, rice and grain land has been utilized
and a considerable scarcity of food has resulted.
Moreover, the farmers who grew the opium were forced
to pay a tax of a few cents on each plant and then,
impossible as it may seem, their product has been
taken from them without payment !

One of the most frequent features of Chinese life
is the tendency toward the adoption of one's father's
profession. The farmer, the military man, the mer-
chant, each passes on his trade through the generations.
Thus it may be supposed than when the peasants of
western Hupeh took up arms and advanced against
the Southern armies, they were sorely tried indeed.
With weapons that consisted of sharpened bamboos,
farm hoes, and the sharp Chinese kitchen knife, a
band of desperate men came down from the mountains
and attacked the cities of Lichwan and Shihnam in
December of 1920. These cities were strongholds of
the Southern armies. It is not strange that the
peasants met defeat. But having once departed from
tradition, one defeat had not the power to dishearten

130 THE GREAT RIVER

them. Having for once disclaimed the characteristics
of ages — servility and passive acceptance of fate —
they suddenly became infuriated fanatics.

And magic, the great weapon of the pagan, was
added to their force. Here reports differ a bit, but,
from them all, we are able to gather that a young girl —
a Chinese Joan of Arc — had a di'eam and saw a vision
of her people released. A leader grew out of the
movement who said that two dragons lived in his
nostrils and that thus it was proved that he was an
emperor chosen by the gods. A costume was adopted
which consisted mainly of red arm bands and turbans.
Thirteen living Buddhas were soon well estabhshed as
authentic in the minds of their followers. Among
their weapons of great strength, the greatest was
their beUef in their own invulnerability to wounds and
immunity from danger. It was after a march of many
days and after many successful attacks on cities and
isolated soldier bands, that they finally learned that
the great law of physical death had not been waived
for them and their cause. The movement began by
being anti-Southern. Then the Northern armies enter-
ed the district and northern oppressors replaced the
southern ones. Informed by the conquered officials of
the cities they captured that these northern armies had
been called in by the Christians and missionaries, the
movement became anti-Christian, anti-missionary and
anti-foreign.

Father Janssen, of Ichang, who is a veteran of the
Franciscan mission of that district, speaks of some of
the things that have actually been reported to him by
eye-witnesses. On the first of April at Lungchupa, the

WEST-CHINA BOXERS IN 1921 131

chapel of the mission was overrun by the Shen-ping.
Twenty-nine Christian men who had taken refuge
there with their famihes were brought before the leader
'p'u sa of the band. As they refused to forswear their
rehgion they were beheaded under the very eyes of
their wives and children.*

In the same way, other Christians were slaugh-
tered at Chihlo, Hsukiaynn, and Laoyach'ang. At
Nanp'ing a Franciscan missionary, Father Peregrin
Teunissen, was caught and bound and badly beaten
by several gods and goddesses. He was only released
after the repeated pleadings of a local pagan chief.
But his house and chapel were looted and destroyed.
The church of another Belgian missionary has been
converted into a pagoda.

A Hwaihng, a convent of native sisters, together
with their orphan girls and the local missionary,
Father Trudo Jans, had been for a long time in great
danger. Here, Father Janssen said the entire sup-
ply of rice had been taken and there was nothing for the
sisters and their orphaned charges to eat.

Thus the new Boxers continued their march to the
north. Just as the Taipings gathered numbers on
their march toward the Yangtze, so did these fanatic
revolutionists. The length of the march covered a
distance which it is difficult for a man to travel in
twelve days, making the best time possible. As they
went, they burned and looted. Always believing them-

*In January, 1922, the Belgian Franciscan priest, Father Julien Adons,
was murdered in cold blood by assassins who broke in as he sat quietly at
dinner. Although effort was rnade to accredit this brutal crime to the Shen-
ping, the evidence seems to point to the undisciplined, barbarous soldiery
as being the actually guilty. This was the fifth martyrdom among the
faithful Belgian Franciscan fathers in this district during the last 25 years.

132 THE GREAT RIVER

selves to be invulnerable they were never afraid for
themselves, and neither were they doubted by the fright-
ened, superstitious people. They captured rifles and
two machine-guns from the Northern armies which
had been sent to that district the preceding
November — indeed from the very troops that looted
Ichang on Saint Andrew's eve.

The movement had spread by that time so that
the entire district was aflame, part of the devotees
marching toward the Yangtze, and part remaining
behind to carry on. A detachment, 2,000 strong,
advanced on Wanhsien. Now, according to the tale,
many deluded people of both sexes and even children
came to beheve themselves possessed of some certain
god. Magical rites were a part of their strange cere-
mony. Every militant who performed these gained
invulnerability. A small girl and a small boy were
escorted by the Shen-ping to decide the fate of
victims. Upon their word, " good " or " not
good," rested the life or death of many captives. If
these things had been all ! When the chapels of
missions were robbed, the Shen-ping donned the vest-
ments of the priests ; they drank Chinese wine from
the chalices ; they robbed from the people and the
fathers not only food and money but priceless per-
sonal treasures.

Then Wanhsien and the reckoning day ! Word
came to the officials of the aged city which sits so
quaintly among its hills, that on the opposite bank
of the river Yangtze was a band of gods and goddesses
at whose command the orbs and planets of the universe
moved or stayed at rest. They were invulnerable,

WEST-CHINA BOXERS IN 1921 133

they said, and had come to enter the gates. Now,
it so happened, that Wanhsien was much distressed
within herself because of her own discontented, re-
belUng soldiers. So, when the 2,000 came marching,
their red flags ahead of them, the gates were opened.
Their weapons were still only hoes and spiked bam-
boos. Each man wore the red badge of immunity.
The soldiers fled. At first, affairs promised well under
the new order. But later, the invading army proved
a greater trial than the one which had gone. They
felt their power keenly and wished to prove its force
upon the civilians of Wanhsien. So the general sent
word to his soldiers that he would pay them large
sums of money to return and clear the city of the
peasant soldiers. The result was an appalling massacre.
Their gods failed them. The foreshore of the city was
strewn with 500 slain. It was a complete butchery.
Many of the " spiritual army " still clutched the little
red flags that were to keep them safe. Reports differ
on numbers. About 1,500 must have escaped. But
there were surely as many as 500 killed. The tragedy
of fanaticism was re-enacted. For the measure of
justice in their cause adds to the result the pathetic
touch of faith destroyed.

The paralleUsm between the Shen-ping uprising
in western Hupeh and the beginnings of the Boxer
movement in the north is startling. Boxerism was an
outgrowth of an organization of long-standing in
Shantung, which had its rise in political unrest. The
Shen-ping movement began as a direct rebellion against

134 THE GREAT RIVER

military injustice and oppression and against economic
conditions brought on by political corruption. Boxer-
ism drew its greatest strength from magic and supersti-
tion as did the Shen-ping. The Red Lamp Society,
started by a woman and joined by young girls who,
like the heroines of Chinese fairy tales, wore red
trousers and red girdles, carried on mysterious and
miraculous workings and increased terrorism through-
out the country. From these magic powers, the
soldiery were supposed to derive the same quahties
as are these people of to-day — invulnerabihty to
bullets and immunity from danger.

In each case, the causes of the uprising have been
both direct and clear, indirect and subtle. The Shen-
ping is a rebellion against injustice. The direct cause
was deprival aggravated by the occupation of their
country by hostile Southern armies. For Hupeh, like
Hunan, has been the battleground where the con-
flicting armies of north and south have fought out
their differences. The commandeering of the land
which is their support led to desperate measures.
The chronic, world-old disgust of the conservative
against the progress of his country, as illustrated by
the students and the Christian Chinese, burned in the
breast of these reactionaries. Rumours of foreign
power with the introduction of a new learning and
the establishment of churches were frightening the
ignorant farmer.

To read the story of Boxerism is to hsten to the
tale of the Shen-ping. Even to the costumes they
wore, to the details of incantations and witchery, to
the growth of a feeling against Christians and then

WEST-CHINA BOXERS IN 1921 135

against foreigners. The organizers of the Boxer
movement called themselves " The Public Spirited
Harmonious Band." The organizers of the Shen-ping
call themselves " The Multitude of Worthies and
Holy Ones."

A most interesting revelation of the motives and
object of the Shen-ping rising appears in the illum-
inating edict of the Pure Jade Emperor which was sent
to the mihtary officials before the entrance of the army
into Wanhsien. In it he states the causes of rebelhon,
the aim of the organization, and declares the power
possessed by himself and his followers. It is thus the
edict begins : —

" Tsen, the Gem Emperor, Most High God, situat-
ed in the Celestial Heaven. The Leader of the Multi-
tude of Worthies and Holy Ones, and the Ruler of the
Peoples of the Earth. The elements are at our com-
mand as are the orbs and planets of the universe.

" We have the power of life and death. The
spirits of both worlds wait upon Us, not daring to rest
day or night.

" We, maintaining our beneficent nature, are al-
ways deploring judgement and desiring hfe for our
creatures. Yet, also, that the heart of man should be
so hard and stubborn, formulating sins which reach as
a thousand stories up to heaven. The males are hateful
in their disloyalty, the females cause sorrow by their
lack of modesty. These are the last days, and there-
fore. We offer another exhortation."

In the following harangue against the scholars,
the writer proves himself a true son of toil, laboriously
cribbing from the ancient edicts and twisting the sense

136 THE GREAT RIVER

ludicrously to his own ends. The Jade Emperor, who
was probably a fairly good buffalo-driver in his proper
cog, so speaks : —

" The Scholars : — These have abandoned their
good manners, and have used their Uterary attainments
to the slaying of others ; they have eaten up the heritage
of others the eight virtues and moral relation-
ships they have abandoned entirely. They dress like

the princes but carry the heart of the beast

They would burn the Classics.

" Everywhere they have estabhshed schools, but
these have refused to teach the right things and have
gone into new fangled ideas.

" Also, that the juniors should from their infancy
be taught to be rascals, they refuse to teach the classics,
but drill and singing find a place of diligent instruction
in the curriculum. These scholars are imbued with
the ideas of bullying, and from this root spring in-
subordination, intimidation of the masters, formation
of strikes, and lack of respect of the officials."

There is more along the same style, which makes
one reahze on second thought that his source of in-
formation was good even if his philosophy is wrong.
He dismisses the scholars by saying that they must
all be cut off by the sword.

He then proceeds to deal with the farmers, whose
greatest fault is that they are ceasing to observe the
lucky days of the calendar and that they curse at the
rain and swear at the fair weather. The Emperor
pronounces as a great sin that the farmer actually
" slays his cattle and the bolder among them sell the
beef as a means of liveHhood,"

WEST-CHINA BOXERS IN 1921 137

He finds equally harsh things to say concerning
the industrial workers, who want three meals served
to the moment and are not satisfied with the tobacco
allowance ; then he goes on to the employer, who is
proclaimed to be wicked for withholding the same things
that the employee has just been scathed for demanding.
When he speaks of these he evidently feels too strongly
for expression, for he says : " This last class cannot
be adequately described, we must therefore speak of
another class." But that is after a paragraph of well-
selected adjectives regarding, that kind of employer.

His remarks concerning the merchant are remark-
ably astute.

" They have learnt how to sell their spurious wares
to deceived women. Who among this class asks a
reasonable price ? He reasons that ten thousand per
cent, cannot be called covetousness in business.
Having obtained the money, it is expended in immor-
aUty, drink and opium. He refuses to bear domestic
responsibilities. He cares not for the difficulties of
his family so long as his heart is satisfied with mirth.
He explains that business is bad and that he has not
been able to make money on any of his goods."

Quite the oldest excuse in the world, perhaps,
excepting that of unsportsmanhke Adam.

Getting to the business of reform, the Jade Em-
peror declares :

" If we refuse to move at this time, then all the
populace will totter to the pit of destruction.
Therefore we have appointed the celestial armies
of the worthies and the twelve rulers of the
underworld to establish a spirit centre and preach

138 THE GREAT RIVER

our doctrine at Longkupa. This is a revival of the
doings of the ' Boxer ' year. Each year we have
estabhshed preaching centres for the instruction in
morals." So there we have a direct reference to the
Boxer RebelHon and a statement of its revival.

And then the call to repentance, by which he
means, as those before him have always meant, a call
to join his particular cause. " If you help the Gods,
you can get peace and also seize the grey dogs
(soldiers). If you manage to capture a leader of the
grey dogs, then you will have the highest merit. This
merit will absolve all your past misdeeds."

There is much more of it : every sentence a gem.
The Jade Emperor has tried to copy the Imperial
edicts of the ancient times. He has succeeded in
imitating the style of street placards. Street placards
that rouse the people sometimes with proper motives,
sometimes improper, but just such things as must
have been written and given to the people before the
Yangtze riots of 1891.

Has the foreign reader slipped into the lethargy
long edicts cause ? Let these words wake and startle
him ! " China is a most rehgious nation, which has
been the custom from time immemorial. Who would
have thought that it would have come to this ?
Foreign goblins have entered the land. The Catholics
and Jesus religion have got into our parts, and have
deceived the unlearned and stupid among the people.

" They do not worship gods themselves and would
take these people for their pupils. They are abom-
inable beasts and ought to be cut off like the grass
and pulled up by the roots. Pastor indeed ! Priest

WEST-CHINA BOXERS IN 1921 139

indeed ! With the stroke of the sword escort them
down into the lowest hell. When these immoral
incumbrances are thoroughly exterminated, only then
will China have any peace."

CHAPTER XXII
Opium in the West

Our chairs were slowly swinging up the narrow
steps that lead to Chungking hills. There was just
room enough between the high buildings on either side
for the width of the chairs. Few people were going
along the way, but sometimes we would pass a small
boy with a basket of grass crowded against the wall
to let us pass.

We were suddenly startled by the sight of a man's
staring, frightened eyes. He had stopped to let us go
by. His breath was quick and fluttering. We noticed
that he was holding in his open palm two Uttle square
blocks of wood. On each block was a dark-brown,
transparent drop, resembling caramel or treacle. It
was opium. Years ago, when the fight was being
made on opium in Foochow, one of the regulations
regarding its transportation was that the smoker must
carry his opium through the streets openly. He might
not carry it wrapped or in a box or in his closed hand.
Whether this was a relic of that time or not, we could
not say.

Just now, the use of the drug is strictly forbidden
and there are no clauses to the order — at the same
time, its use at the present time is many times more
widespread than it was in 1910, '11, or '12. No
systematic methods are being used to rid the country
of the evil aside from the one agency — the Customs —
which seizes a certain amount of it. Some of the

/ .. / ■. . /■■/,;, /;/

A Robbers' Fortress overlooking the Gorges

OPIUM IN THE WEST 141

Customs officials estimate that they seize about one-
half of the bulk which goes through. Others think
they get only 20 per cent. Others place the percentage
as low as five.

We went below in one of the ships which plies
between Ichang and Chungking. A man was en-
joying a smoke in company with his comrades. He lay
beside his little lamp and dug the opium out of a tiny
cup-like box with an instrument which resembled a
steel knitting needle. He held this in the flame and
rolled the lump of brown gluey substance back and
forth on a tiny stone slab. Then he poked it into the
bowl of his pipe. Then, to enjoy it more, he leaned
his head back on a pillow and holding the pipe over
the lamp, puffed away. The first faint odours are
sweet and sicldy, like pine tar. When the smoke
begins to come up in clouds, it is exactly like old
rubbish — rags and shoes — burning. The captain said,
" Dow^n river, we would throw his opium, pipe and
all, overboard. Here it is no use. There is too
much of it."

Yunnan and Western Szechuan are planted so
thickly that one sees field after field of poppy, mostly
white, but streaked with many gorgeous colours —
scarlet and pink, purple and crimson. A man who had
just been travelling in those districts said that his
coolies had gone out in the fields and purchased raw
opium for 25 cents an ounce. In Chungking, in the
summer of 1921 it was about 70 cents per tael weight ;
in Ichang, approximately $1.20 for the same amount ;
in Hankow, $1.80 ; and in Shanghai, $3. The scale
increases enoush on the way down river to make the

142 THE GREAT RIVER

Customs losses worth taking by the man who deals
in it.

That is the raw opium, of course. Before it is
cooked, it is poisonous, and, it is said, furnishes a
favourite way for the unhappy women of the East, or
those who want to curse their enemies by dying on
their door-steps, to kill themselves.

Strange, many, and varied, are the methods used
in smuggling opium through a Customs station. One
of the simplest is by putting it in the foreigner's
baggage. His is less likely to be searched (at least
the Chinese think so) and it can be procured again
through the foreigner's servant.

It is worth a good deal to a Chinese to get a job
on the Upper Yangtze. In fact, he will pay a goodly
sum of money for it. A certain steward on an up-
river boat is said to have paid $2,000 for a job paying
$40 a month. There are other ways of making big
money besides the opium game, however. Copper
exchange, for instance, makes it possible for a man to
make huge sums of money by changing silver into
coppers in Chungking and selling them in Ichang
or, better still, in Hankow.

The opium seized is placed in the Ichang Customs
godown where one may see ingenious contrivances for
smuggling. One of the most popular ways of carrjdng
it is in a pile of books. The inside of the stack is
entirely cut away and packed with opium. At the
ends and sides, it appears an innocent stack of text-
books, or novels, or Bibles. Opium is found in the
arms and legs of chairs, in the rods at top and bottom
of scrolls, inside the false bottoms of brass bowls.

OPIUM IN THE WEST 143

in wooden dogs and dragons, in the backs of placards
on which are written some inspired poem — ostensibly
to be hung in a pavilion or garden — in eggs (this is very
carefully done), in beer bottles, in all kinds of funeral
apparatus, including coffins.

In Szechuan, a small cheroot is manufactured. A
shipment once came through Ichang which looked
exactly like the rest, but the inspector's trained nose
caught the well-known whiff of the poppy. Each
cheroot was a roll of opium wrapped with tobacco and
plugged at the ends with tobacco. Animals are stuffed
with the raw product and, when they die, they are
carried down river to be sold, but not until the precious
poison has been recovered.

Then there are the more obvious methods. Bas-
kets of clothes are only clothes on the outside. Kero-
sene tins are stowed away under the coal in engine
rooms. Whole trunks are packed with it. A captain
of one of the boats was told that he was carrying
opium in his mast light. He couldn't believe it, but
a sailor climbed up and brought down six and a half
catties of it.

Opium was once found in a part of a ship to which
the only visible means of access was through the funnel.
The ship had to be taken apart to remove it. These
are only a few of the methods which have been used
to evade the anti-opium law. The Customs officials
would be happy if the only difficulties were evasions.
But they are not all. Sometimes, military officials go
through a port with the official seal of exemption on
their boxes and with a guard. They are then immune
from search.

144 THE GREAT RIVER

When the Customs men at Wanhsien were making
a seizure, at one time, they were prevented by the
bayonets of soldiers — soldiers under the command of
officers — while other soldiers made away with the opium.

In 1906, when the Empress-Dowager issued her
famous anti-opium edict, began the greatest systematic
fight against the evil ever waged in China and, in fact,
in the whole world. The years between the issuing
of the proclamation, which ordered that the growth,
sale, and consumption be absolutely stopped in ten
years, and 1911, were years of bloodshed, bribery, the
invention of a million ways of sidestepping the regu-
lations, and the cultivation of the flaming, tell-tale
poppy behind matter-of-fact looking beans, inside
walled areas, and in out-of-the-way valleys and
glens.

But it was a most successful campaign for all
that. Opium smoking was done surreptitiously and
it became an'^nnadmitted sin among the higher classes.
It involved a loss of face. Anti-opium societies sprung
up all over the land and the British Government agreed
to reduce the exports of Indian opium to China by a
certain proportion each year. So it is that one can
read such hopeful things written during the years of
1911 and '12 regarding the finis of opium traffic.
However, its growth and trade have increased enor-
mously in the last few years.

Soldiers are encouraged to plant opium, their
military leaders make huge sums of money on its sale,
the soldiers are not paid their salaries, and then there
is looting. A good manj^^ of the cases of brigandage
and looting that have occurred on the upper river

Temple of " The Cool Breeze at the Side of the River. "

v., Far, }-ii,ji lU

Looking down on one of the Rapids

I

OPIUM IN THE WEST 145

could probably be accounted for in just that way.
Foreigners recognize the fact that danger of looting is
greater when large seizures of opium have been made.
The Customs godown at Ichang held a ton and half of
it during the days after the June looting. Conditions
were unsettled and the Customs officials put off the
burning of the opium for a few days for fear of the
rioting which might occur. Of course, hunger is the
first cause of looting and, probably, many of the soldiers
never get deeper than that in their spirit of rebellion,
but no doubt the remembrance of the poppy fields
and the knowledge of the wealth in which the mihtary
men are rolling adds, to their minds, righteousness to
the cause.

Last year haK of the Yunnan army was paid in
opium. And that is the so-called constitutional army
fighting in defence of the principles of republicanism.
There is no doubt that much of the fighting among
generals in western districts is a real opium war —
contests over who shall control the opium-bearing
districts and the revenue thereform. Seizure rewards
at present in Ichang range from $10 to $40 per 100
tael weight according to whether one is a Customs
official, an informer, or an officer of a ship. During
the June, 1921, quarter, 24 piculs of opium were seized
at Chungking as against 12 during the March quarter,
the former being the season of steam-boats, the latter
of junks. Two and a half tons of opium were burned
at Ichang during the three months of April, May and
June.

It is evident that strong measures will have to be
taken if the evil is to be stamped out after these years

146 THE GREAT RIVER

of widespread increase in cultivation and traffic.
Recently an entii'e crew on an up-river steamer was
discharged as a measure against smuggling. Such
measures as that are too local and ineffective against
the great temptation to the farmers to take part in such
a lucrative trade. Moreover, the central government
makes no effort to introduce a united and systematic
campaign against it. Szechuan claims independence,
besides, and does not recognize the authority of Peking.
And the condition of the people, their poverty,
the absence of the ordinary joys of hfe, their ex-
posure to cold and hours of straining, heart-breaking
labour, all contribute to push them on to indulge in this
sure remedy, which brings them for a time alleviation
from suffering and dreams of warmth and comfort.
Which goes to prove that reform is not reform at all
except as it is slow, constructive, and at work on the
very roots of things.

CHAPTER XXIII

The City of Seven Gates — Chungking

The Great City lies at the convergence of two
streams. One stream flows from lands which are
rich and full of treasure. The second, called " The
River of the Golden Sand," has its source in unknown
and uncharted lands. They converge at acute angles
to one another. And on that narrowing promontory
between. Time has builded the Great City. Because
Time works slowly and laboriously and bit by bit,
the City has grown up like a true child of Time —
haphazard, representative of many plans and of plans
disarranged. At one time, true to the traditions of
that country, a wall was built, very wide and strong.
It was built so that it cut straight across the promontory
isolating a triangular tip-end. It was then extended
on the two sides of the triangle and was cut with
Seven Gates.

The promontory was very hilly so all the streets
were built in steps. And gradually the City became
more and more crowded. The trees which used
picturesquely to top the ridges of those hills gave place
to houses of business, restaurants and inns for the weary
pilgrim, to houses of money exchange and little shops
where trade is made in hides and silks and medicines, and
in close proximity, to stimulate that trade, to the rooms
where tea is poured by daint}^ slant-eyed ladies of song.

Six hundred thousand souls came to live within
the Seven Gates and yet the walls did not expand and

148 THE GREAT RIVER

still a man could walk about them in the space of
three hours time. Never a street runs straight. They
wind and twist and go, now up, now down, over the
hills and around the bases of hills, narrow, built between
high walls of intimate houses.

Everything that was beautiful within the City
gradually disappeared. There remains, of course,
the setting. Away back of the City rise the hills,
in range after range, for which that Far- Away Land is
famed. These are no ordinary hills. They rise in
fantastic, dream-hke shape. Some of them are needle-
like in form, some are chopped off squarely at the top,
others are rolling and wooded. Gashes in the nearer
ones, show red soil beneath and so that strip of country
is called the Red Basin. Sometimes, the hills are
covered with rhododendron, and sometimes they are
pmk with cherry blossom. There are always those
peculiar trees, straight trunked and knobby at the
top. Nowhere is there such verdure, such prolific
abundance.

The tempered climate gives birth to even such
plants as are known to tropical lands so that here and
there a banana leaf hangs over a crumbling wall. And
as the sun sets in the West at evening, he sends
his radiance over those misty hills and sets the Jewel
to sparkling and glowing in its setting. The streams,
themselves hold the stone — the would-be Jewel-City.
They are brown streams for they relentlessly carry
rich soil away eastward bent on taking their part in
the remodehng of the land. They are also very swift
and destructive and are thus a fitting part of this
mysterious and dangerous countrv. But the Jewel

THE CITY OF SEVEN GATES 149

they hold is found to be, on close inspection, a
thing of flaws, ugly and with hardly a trace of beauty.

The City straggles beyond the walls. It is also
surrounded by its dead, acres and acres of white tomb-
stones marking their graves, here and there a concrete
disc which is a mausoleum. Bej^ond this still are
gardens and parks and summer homes of wealthy men.
Wherever a small stream cuts through, it is bridged
by a structure of beautiful and unusual design.

Go into the City by the steps made slimy from the
river-water which continually slops from the buckets
of the water-carriers. Let yourself be carried in a
canopied chair on the backs of toiling men. Your
ascent is almost vertical. Your way winds through
a surging crowd of men and women and children
labourers, not unmixed with pigs which are being led
and driven squealingly along and with" mules, also, who
share the tasks of men in the Great City. A fall
seems imminent as your bearers carry you along the
slippery way. But soon you become assured of the
firm muscles of these men long accustomed to bearing
a heavy pole upon their shoulders. Sometimes the
corners around which the chair is carried give hardly
room enough to turn. Sometimes the street descends
in a series of steps with two-yard stops between and the
bearers ahead begin a new descent before the ones
behind have fairly reached the landing. It is like
soaring to ride thus : a swoop, a rest, and again a
swoop. We pass along streets bright with red ban-
ners embroidered with dragons of gold. Streets, also,
filthy with the dirt and slime of ages. They are the
narrowest streets anyone ever dared to make.

150 THE GREAT RIVER

The inhabitants of the Great City gaze at you
curiously, for it is not often that someone of the World
goes into that Far- A way Land. But you do not gaze in
return — not if you can draw your eyes away. For
nowhere are such awful sights to be seen as these in
the streets of the City. A grey-haired beggar woman
with a scarred leprous face asks for alms — her nose is
entirely gone but a copper cash is in its place and
through the two holes in its centre she draws her breath.
An old man with only skin drawn over his bones and
a withered pipe-stem limb. Boys with running sores
— kept so, so that their owners may not lose their
eligibility to the beggars' guild. Another old woman
with disfigured face and sore-covered body, seated on a
step — and a tiny child wailing at her dried-up breast.
Of such things are made the Great City so that you,
in your canopied chair, wish that you had not seen
and, having seen, could possibly forget.

Thinking to clear your mind of the City's ugliness,
you make your way to the bazaar. Here there are
streets and streets of little shops radiating from a
central square — the meeting place of the business
men of the City. Hard by stands a noble building
whence comes much of the control of the City's
wealth and you well know of the thriving business
there. The streets are wider here and not so shmy
and your bearers allow you to alight from your canopied
chair to walk among the shops. There one may see
many curious things. Buckles of jade and balls of
agate and amber. Ugly little men carved from old
ivory or wrought in crystal. Little wooden boxes
ingeniously fitted into one another and designed

I'fiqe 160

Tall Rocks like Citadels

THE CITY OF SEVEN GATES 151

for wealthy ladies' vanities. Brooches designed from
old, hand-wrought gold and set with crystal
over brilliantly-blue kingfisher feathers. Tiny wooden
wine cups decorated with the script of that distant
land. Peach stones carved into little idols and strung
upon sill^en cord. Then there are the shops of silks —
heavy, ivory-coloured crepe, rich tapestries woven
with a pure gold thread, yellow raw silk twisted like
golden taffy.

Keepers of medicine shops exhibit their strange
wares and proclaim the heaUng or strengthening
powers of a tiger's skull bone or a dragon's tooth.
They bring out the lining membrane of the gizzard
of a fowl and explain the miraculous cures it will
produce. They have a " midsummer root " which
deprives the eater of speech and a precious portion of
an ox's gall which transmits great courage to him
who would partake thereof. They have also the
cocoons of caterpillars and the dried leaves of many
flowers — wild honeysuckle and lily flower and the
curious chin-ch'ai, which is so very tenacious of life
that it recovers even after it has been dried. Even
the stomach of a mosquito is not too small to be
proclaimed peculiarly effective in the cure of fevers.

You must leave the bazaar and travel again
through narrow streets if you would see what else
the Great City sells to increase its wealth. As you
ride along, you sometimes hear the startling insistent
jingle of bells and are borne close to the wall to let
a rider pass by on his tiny pony. Nothing moves on
wheels in the Great City. There are only the feet of
men and of animals to carry one on the way. Through-

152 THE GREAT RIVER

out the Red Basin nothing moves on four wheels or
two. They say that out upon the narrow paths away
from the City a one-wheeled conveyance is pushed by
man and that it carries heavy loads, but no path is so
wide or so level that a two-wheeled cart can move thereon.

At last we come to a house of business. There
collect the products of the country-side. From far
and wide, the industrious country-people bring in
handfuls of bristles from their pigs. They are
long and strong bristles, for they come from the wildest
pigs of the wildest country — who have not become
softened by luxurious floundering in slops. The
bristles have been laboriously sorted into uniform
lengths by the farmer and tied into bundles. They
will be sent out into the world and there will command
the highest prices on the best of markets. And those
who buy will not know of the Great City whence
they come.

Here are goatskins and buffalo hides and sheep's
wool. There is vegetable tallow, which will strike
one as a strange product, and tobacco leaf. Here one
may see a pouch of musk. In the remotest borders of
the Far-Away Land, there roams an antelope. He
carries a tiny pouch, only about one-and-a-half inches
in diameter and inside it there is a reddish-black
powder, light and dry and not gritty, and this powder
is called musk. Its smell is peculiar and penetrating,
its taste bitter and aromatic, and as a medicine it is a
most priceless substance for one catty alone costs
400 taels of silver before shipment. It, too, goes out
into the world and becomes a part of every perfume
on the market.

THE CITY OF SEVEN GATES 153

Again on the wa}^ from the crest of the street
we catch glimpses of the temples on the hills be-
yond. Then down once more through the narrow
streets in canopied chair, passing countless men
and women with heavy burdens borne on poles and
innumerable naked children playing in the path, we
leave the Great Walled City by the largest of the
Seven Gates.

Who says that Yesterday has gone ?

fi

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY

Return to desk from which borrowed.
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

V

KJ

AUG 1 6 1954 LU
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LOAN

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